Mystical Designs

LESSON1.2

Attributes and Values

In html pages are not displayed the way you type them for example if you were to type in MS word a line then hit he enter key your cursor would drop down a line. Well in html that is not the case you have to tell the browser to skip down a line. There are 2 commands that can do this. They are and . The (think of Break) will start the content immediately following the tag on the next line so if you were to type

This is line1 
This is line2

It would look like this

This is line1
This is line2

Were as the (paragraph) tag tells the browser to skip two lines so if you were to type

This is line1 
This is line2

It would look like this.

This is line1

This is line2

If you don’t put any tags at all and typed it like this

This is line1
This is line2

It would show up on your web page like this

This is line1This is line2

And we can’t have that now can we?

Ok so attributes and values what’s all the fuss? You can not have an attribute with out a value nor a value without an attribute (they go hand in hand so to speak) Or you can think of it like getting gas. The pump is the tag the pump handle is the attribute and the grade selection is the value. You can put that pump handle in your gas tank and stand there all day long no gas is gonna come out unless you tell the pump what kind of gas you want. So like the web page you can put the attribute but until you give it a value it is nothing more then dead weight. Ok so lets add some attributes and values to our tag.

This will tell your browser to create a paragraph break and to align the content that follows the tag (until it is closed) in the center. Most attributes have multiple values for example the above you could replace the center with “left”, “right”, or “justified” left and right well the are self explanatory and you really should never have to use the left as that is the default. Aligning on the left makes everything line up on an imaginary line on the left side of the page leaving the right side jagged where as aligning on the right will do just the opposite it will line the content up on the right side on an imaginary line leaving the right side jagged. Justified is a more “professional” way of doing align and is what I recommend using. Justified will align the content even along an imaginary line on both the right and left side giving the page an appearance of being square and all content flush with each other.

Look at the example below for a more in-depth explanation of the entire tag

so by placing the above code in your web page you are telling it to center all content from there on out until it comes up on an end paragraph tag, a new paragraph tag with a new attribute and value, or another command that overrides the paragraph tag. The equal sign between the attribute and the value represents the relationship between them. It simply means the attribute =the value. The quotation marks around the value are the official way to write code. Honestly you can get by not using the quotes in all tags however I warn you there are some tags that require them and you may encounter some older browsers that don’t understand if they are not there and they go all haywire. I suggest that you get in the habit of using them as well as typing in all lowercase letters. For the time being you will be able to type in uppercase but it has been rumored that XHTML will become the new way to code page and HTML will be done away with and with the XHTML it is required for the commands to be in lowercase so you might as well get in the habit of doing it now rather then trying to remember to do it every time you type.

In closing I just want to point out a few things with attributes and values. I have only showed you one example here but there are many more ways you can use them and we will learn them all in due time but you can not only use them to change the alignment of your content but font type, size, color, and other nifty little things.

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