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The Bare Bones Guide to HTML
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Credit where credit is due
Many people have provided suggestions and assistance as the Bare Bones Guide to HTML has developed. My thanks go out to everyone who has contributed to the effort.
Several people have created excellent HTML guides and made them
available on the Web -- who needs another one?
This document is designed to serve a particular niche. It is
intended as a concise "cheat sheet" that you can use to look up the
correct forms of tags as you are creating Web pages.
Other HTML
guides provide significantly more descriptive material about how
to use particular tags or how HTML works in general. If you are a
beginner, you might try one of those guides first.
There are also several
style guides
that focus more on how to write pages that look good and work on
different browsers. I encourage you to read one or more of them if
you are planning on creating Web pages; far too many people ignore
the fact that their pages are going to be read by other people and
that there are better and worse ways of doing things.
My WWW Help Page
has links to numerous other sites that provide information on HTML
and Web page design. It's a good place to start if you have specific
questions that go beyond the "bare bones" information provided here.
This guide is designed for people who know enough not to need
step-by-step instructions, but who haven't memorized the exact format
of every HTML tag yet. If you want a "quick reference" that you
can glance at without having to read through additional descriptive
material, this guide is for you.
The other distinguishing aspect of this guide is what it includes.
The Bare Bones Guide to HTML is intended to include all of the
tags in common usage on Web pages today. Specifically, the Guide
lists the following:
HTML 4.0 tags
Netscape and Microsoft extensions to HTML
The development of HTML has been a confusing process, as attempts
to adopt formal standards have often been overrun by developments in
the marketplace. The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) is the official standards body for HTML. The current
W3C recommendation is HTML 4.0.
In its
Position
Statement on HTML, W3C recommends that information providers use
the HTML 4.0 specification, but that tools also be backward-compatible with earlier versions. Therefore, version 4.0 of the Bare Bones
Guide to HTML includes all the HTML 4.0 tags, but distinguishes tags introduced in version 4.0 from those in version 3.2 as well.
I have also included all of the Netscape and Microsoft extensions to HTML, with the exception of some server interaction tags such as server push animation. Some of these extensions will not display properly if people viewing your
pages are using another browser, so you should think about your
audience before deciding whether to use them.
For clarity, I have separated out different attributes that can be applied to
the same tag onto separate lines. Generally, multiple attributes can be
combined in the same tag.
Tags are listed in upper case for ease of reading, although most tags are
not case sensitive.
SYMBOLS USED
URL URL of an external file (or just file name if in the same directory)
? Arbitrary number (i.e. <H?> means <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc.)
% Arbitrary percentage (i.e. <HR WIDTH="%"> means <HR WIDTH="50%">, etc.)
*** Arbitrary text (i.e. ALT="***" means fill in with text)
$$$$$$ Arbitrary hex (i.e. BGCOLOR="#$$$$$$" means BGCOLOR="#00FF1C", etc.)
::: Arbitrary date (i.e. DATETIME=":::" means "1994-11-05T08:15:30" etc.)
@ Email address (i.e. "mailto:@" means "mailto:kevin@werbach.com" etc.)
,,, Comma-delimited (i.e. COORDS=",,," means COORDS="0,0,50,50", etc.)
| Alternatives (i.e. ALIGN=LEFT|RIGHT|CENTER means pick one of these)
COMPATIBILITY
(remember, HTML is evolving and browser implementations vary)
(no notation) In the HTML 3.2 spec.; should work on all browsers
4.0 Introduced in HTML 4.0 recommendation
N1 Netscape extension introduced with Navigator version 1.0 or 1.1
N2 Netscape extension introduced with Navigator version 2.0
N3 Netscape extension introduced with Navigator version 3.0
N4 Netscape extension introduced with Navigator/Communicator version 4.0
MS Microsoft Internet Explorer extension
* Netscape extension now included in the HTML 4.0 specification
Updated everything to comply with the HTML 4.0 specification.
Redesigned the layout of the main index page.
Combined the tables and formatted versions, since all major browsers now support tables.
Version 3.0 -- July 21, 1996.
Updated everything to conform to the
HTML 3.2
specification.
Added a new section for Java tags supported by HTML 3.2
Revised the introductory material and annotations.
Redesigned the layout of the "tables" version, in order to
make it easier to read.
All major browsers now support tables, so to save time I have
decided to eliminate the separate non-table "HTML" version of the
Guide, and to rename the "tables" version as the "formatted"
version. Users who cannot view this version can still use the
"plain text" version.
Added the new tags implemented by beta versions of Netscape
Navigator 3.0 up to 3.0b5, including:
table cell colors
multi-column text
spacers
frame border control
strikeout via the <S> tag and underlining via the <U> tag.
These were in HTML 3.0 but not HTML 3.2, so I list them as Netscape extensions.
the FACE attribute for the <FONT> tag (originally a Microsoft extension)
Fixed more typos.
Version 2.0 -- October 7, 1995. Lots of changes and
corrections in this version.
Rewrote the introductory material and compatibility table
language
Added + notation for Netscape extensions that have been
adopted by most major browsers. This notation is by nature
approximate; it represents my judgment about which tags have are
widely supported even though they are not (and may never be) in
HTML 3.0.
Added ,,, notation in table of symbols for comma-delimited
lists.
Restructured the Hard Formatting and Soft Formatting sections
into Presentation Formatting and Structural Definition. This
change makes clear the important distinction between
presentation-based and structural markup. A few tags have been
moved around as a result of this change, and the <ADDRESS>
tag has been moved up from Miscellaneous into Structural
Definition.
Eliminated the Alignment section by shifting the tags listed
there into either Structural Definition or Presentation
Formatting. Although this results in the Netscape <CENTER>
tag being split up from the other alignment tags, it allows the
alignment attributes of tags such as <P> and <H?> to
be associated with the underlying tags they operate on. This
change is consistent with the HTML 3.0 philosophy of handling
alignment through attributes to existing tags rather than through
dedicated tags.
Added listing for Netscape client pull animation (this has
been around since Netscape 1.1, but was not listed in the Guide).
Support for new Netscape anML 3.0 tags implemented in
Netscape 2.0:
Frames (added a whole new section)
Embedded Objects (in Links and Graphics)
Divisions (in Structural Definition)
Font Color (in Presentation Formatting)
Big/Small font size (in Structural Definition)
Superscript/Subscript (in Presentation Formatting)
File Upload (in Forms)
Text wrap (in Forms)
Target Windows (in Links and Graphics) and Base Target (in
Miscellaneous)
Client-side imagemaps (in Links and Graphics)
Removed <XMP> tag, because I have been convinced that it
is archaic.
Moved prologue tags to Miscellaneous section, to indicate that
they are not required and reduce confusion.
Fixed listing for <NOBR> container by adding a closing
tag
Changed "outline type" to "numbering type" for Netscape
extension to ordered lists, in order to avoid confusion about what
this attribute does.
Changed wording of <P> tag description to indicate that
it is "usually" rendered as a double return.
Changed notation for hex triplet from $$$ to $$$$$$ to
indicate that six characters are required to reference the three
hex values.
improved consistency of column alignment in the text version.
Version 1.22 -- August 18, 1995. Added a tag and some
attributes that had been accidentally omitted from the forms section,
and corrected the listing of which color tags are in the HTML 3.0
spec.
Version 1.21 -- July 26, 1995. Removed the archaic
<NEXTID> tag and added some annotations to the HTML and table
versions.
Version 1.2 -- July 25, 1995. Several revisions to improve
compliance with the official HTML specifications, and to acknowledge
more widespread implementation of certain HTML 3.0 tags.
Version 1.1 -- July 19, 1995. Cleaned up a number of things
in the introductory material, and correctly specified the ISO 8859-1
character set instead of ASCII.
Version 1.03 -- July 12, 1995. Updated copyright notices to
eliminate confusion with Bare Bones Software. Added Netscape relative
font sizing tag, and changed the link to the list of ASCII symbol
codes.
Version 1.02 -- April 24, 1995. Corrected some additional
typos, fixed the link to this version history, and added the standard
copyright and registered TM codes to go along with the Netscape
versions.
Version 1.01 -- April 11, 1995. Fixed a couple minor typos
and ambiguities pointed out by helpful folks, including some errors
in the list tags section.
Version 1.0 HTML -- April 6, 1995. Has some additional
introductory material, but the text is otherwise identical to version
1.0. Formatted for WWW viewing, with assistance from John Berkin.
Version 1.0 -- April 2, 1995. Corrected some errors pointed
out by other people, and made some minor revisions to the
introduction and the formatting of certain sections.
Version 0.9b -- March 30, 1995. First public version.
Posted on comp.infosystems.www.providers.