HTML Basics & Sound - Basic tags, colors, and background sound

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Starting Out & Sound

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE><META><BODY>

These tags are not case sensitive. The slash is a kill tag, telling the browser to stop whatever the original command was. You will begin every document with:
<HTML>
<BODY>

And you will end every document with:
</BODY>
</HTML>

Note the reverse order. All commands must be ended in this order - the first then becomes the last, the second becomes the second-to-last, and so on. We'll get to more of that later.

Next is the HEAD tag in which several things can be placed - like TITLE (the name or title of your page), META tags with keywords which search engine spiders use to catalog your pages. META tags do not need a kill slash.

So now it looks like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>HTML Basics</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="code, html, help, tutor, basics, primer">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="A basic tutorial in HTML coding">
<BODY>

Is it beginning to make sense? Now we will choose colors for text, links, visited links, active links, and backgrounds. These commands will go into the BODY BACKGROUND tag, but are not ended (killed) until the very end of the document. If you choose not to put in any color choices, you will get the default colors - white background for Netscape (blue for IE), black text, royal blue link color, red active link, purple visited link color.

Colors are given in six-figure codes (hexadecimal codes). These hex codes are a blending of RGB values (red, blue, green). The strongest value is F, the weakest is 0. All Fs (FFFFFF) is white, all 0s (000000) is black. FF0000 would be bright red (red value is strongest and blue, green are the weakest), 00FF00 is bright blue, 0000FF is bright green. There is a java page at my backgrounds site where you can make colors and the hex code is given to you.
Hex Code Generator

If we chose a black background, yellow text, red links, white visited links, and blue active links, the BODY tag would look like this:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#FFFF00" LINK="#FF0000" VLINK="#FFFFFF" ALINK="#0000FF">

So our page so far looks like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>HTML Basics</TITLE>
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="code, html, help, tutor, basics, primer">
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="A basic tutorial in HTML coding">
<BODY BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#FFFF00" LINK="#FF0000" VLINK="#FFFFFF" ALINK="#0000FF">

Background Music & Sound Files

The simplest way to let the reader access a sound or music file is to put a direct link to it on your page. This will open a second, but very small window with the player and player controls in it. Here is a link to Final Countdown - try it out. This also allows the music to stay on when the reader moves on to another page. (Scroll down to turn off the embeded music if you want to hear this one.)

If you want to have background music begin with the loading of your page, then you can use this code:

(xxxxx.mid will be the name of your file and it can be a .mid extension or another like . au or .ram)

The reason you have it twice is because Netscape and IE recognize different commands -- the EMBED is for Netscape and the BGSOUND is for IE. A BGSOUND command can also be placed within the BODY tag.

The EMBED code above will place a smaller version of the player on the page like this:

Talk To The Animals

Now you're set with sound, so you are ready to put all your content in...your life story, that novel you finally finished, pix of your boat, dog, garden...whatever.

Part One
Starting Out & Sound

Part Two
Working with text

Part Three
Images, HRs, Linking, and Wallpaper

Part Four
Tables are your friends

Part Five
Using Backgrounds & Borders

background/hr by me: Papagei Studios