Thursday, 3 July 2014

Coding my way...

My First HTML page

When I started out with coding, my first HTML page rendition on my browser felt like Magic!!!!
If you are new to this, its might feel the same way too to you. But the magic you feel the first time should be a driving force for you to want to do more and go further. I'm with you on this.

Structure of HTML










The above shows the structure of a basic HTML page with the basic tags opening and closing

Writing your HTML codes

On a previous post, I talked about Web browsers and text editors. You can click on this link to go to that page.
If you have successfully downloaded the installation files and installed them, the next step you should take now is to open the text editor and create a new file. You can name it "first"or anyhow you like..

If you have done that , the the next thing to do is to start coding. Yeah!!!!!
Go ahead and type in the code you see below into the text editor.



After you are done typing, you should save the file.  The file extension of the file should be ".html" like you have ".jpg" for pictures.
For a beginner, I will advise you to save your HTML file on your Desktop folder so it can easily be accessed.

Web browsers automatically recognize HTML file. So, you should just double click on the file and it will be opened up by your default browser.

The result will look like the above on your browser. You did the Magic. If it does not look like that on your browser, then check your code for errors. You do not need internet connection to load your page.
Look forward to my next post to learn more on the topic.

Getting started with coding

My assumption is that you are reading this post now and you are ready to go into learning how to code. The first criteria which I think you should have met is having a personal computer of your own. You can use someone's computer, but I strongly recommend that you use yours. 

What do I need in my computer to code?

To start coding with your computer, there are a couple of programs you will first need to install on your computer.
First of all, you must have a Web browser installed on your system. It could be Opera Mini, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer. This is to be able to be able to test the codes you write.
Secondly, you will need to download an advanced text editor or notepad.. you can either download Sublime Text Editor
or Notepad++
You could just use your normal Notepad in your computer if you cannot download the text editors above.
After you get this done, then you are ready to move on to the next stage