Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours

By Dick Oliver

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Put Your HTML Page Online Today
  • I. Your First Web Page
  • Hour 1. Understanding HTML and XML
  • Hour 2. Create a Web Page Right Now
    • A Simple Sample Page
    • Tags Every HTML Page Must Have
    • Paragraphs and Line Breaks
    • Headings
    • Peeking at Other People's Pages
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 3. Linking to Other Web Pages
  • Hour 4. Publishing Your HTML Pages
  • II. Web Page Text
  • Hour 5. Text Alignment and Lists
  • Hour 6. Text Formatting and Font Control
  • Hour 7. Email Links and Links Within a Page
  • Hour 8. Creating HTML Forms
  • III. Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 9. Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 10. Putting Graphics on a Web Page
  • Hour 11. Custom Backgrounds and Colors
  • Hour 12. Creating Animated Graphics
  • IV. Web Page Design
  • Hour 13. Page Design and Layout
  • Hour 14. Graphical Links and Imagemaps
  • Hour 15. Advanced Layout with Tables
  • Hour 16. Using Style Sheets
  • V. Dynamic Web Pages
  • Hour 17. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages
  • Hour 18. Interactive Pages with Applets and ActiveX
  • Hour 19. Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers
  • Hour 20. Setting Pages in Motion with Dynamic HTML
  • VI. Building a Web Site
  • Hour 21. Multipage Layout with Frames
  • Hour 22. Organizing and Managing a Web Site
  • Hour 23. Helping People Find Your Web Pages
  • Hour 24. Planning for the Future of HTML
  • VII. Appendixes
  • A. Readers' Most Frequently Asked Questions
  • B. HTML Learning Resources on the Internet
  • C. Complete HTML 4 Quick Reference
  • D. HTML Character Entities

Headings

When you browse through Web pages on the Internet, you can't help but notice that most of them have a heading at the top that appears larger and bolder than the rest of the text. Figure 2.6 is a simple Web page, containing examples of the three largest heading sizes you can make with HTML.

Figure 2.6 The <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> tags in Figure 2.5 make the three progressively smaller headings on this Web page.

As you can see in Figure 2.5, the HTML that creates headings couldn't be simpler. For a big level 1 heading, put an <h1> tag at the beginning and an </h1>, tag at the end. For a slightly smaller level 2 heading, use <h2> and </h2> and for a little level 3 heading, use <h3> and </h3>.

Figure 2.5 Any text between <h1> and </h1> tags will appear as a large heading. <h2> and <h3> make smaller headings.

Theoretically, you can also use <h4>, <h5>, and <h6> to make progressively less important headings, but nobody uses these very much—after all, what's the point of a heading if it's not big and bold? Besides, most Web browsers don't show a noticeable difference between these and the small <h3> headings anyway.

It's important to remember the difference between a title and a heading. These two words are often interchangeable in day-to-day English, but when you're talking HTML, <title> gives the entire page an identifying name that isn't displayed on the page itself, but only on the window title bar. The heading tags, on the other hand, cause some text on the page to be displayed with visual emphasis. There can only be one <title> per page, but you can have as many <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> headings as you want, in any order that suits your fancy.

You'll learn to take complete control over the appearance of text on your Web pages in Part II, "Web Page Text." Yet headings provide the easiest and most popular way to draw extra attention to some important text.

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