Things Needed in Designing your Webpage

Before working with your very first webpage, let us discuss first the things needed in creating it and how to give your webpage a name.

In creating a webpage, you will need a directory or folder, a web browser and a word processor.

Folder (also called as directory)
            This will be used to hold and organize your files for the webpages you are designing. You may have a sub-folder to hold pictures or graphics that will be used in your web pages. You may put your folder on your desktop to have an access of it easily.
Let’s create a folder and name it “my-webpages” on your desktop. One of the methods and probably the easiest one if you are using Windows XP/Vista/7 is by right-clicking on your DESKTOP, choosing NEW and then choose FOLDER and name it “my-webpage”, all small letters without the quote.

Right-click on DESKTOP then NEW then FOLDER then name it “my-webpages”

Web Browser
            Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are some of today’s most popular web browsers. They are software applications used for retrieving information resources from the World Wide Web. We will use some of them to see how the created HTML document will be rendered in those browsers. It is important to test your webpages using different browser for you to get an idea of how your webpage will look like on them, because your webpage might look great in one browser but might look disastrous in another. Other examples of web browsers are Opera, Safari, Konqueror and many more.

Word Processor
            You will only need a simple word processor or text editor like Notepad in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7; GEdit in Ubuntu; and TextEdit in MacOSX. You can also use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.org Writer in creating web pages but they are not simple text editors because they include lots of unnecessary formatting. There are also lots of software available that can be used in creating webpages even without the knowledge of HTML, some of those are the Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web, FrontPage, etc.

Naming Your Web Page

The Name (filename)

In naming your HTML file, it is strongly recommended that you do not use spaces in the filename. You may put a dash (-), a short horizontal line, in place of space in your HTML filename. If you place a space on your file name some browsers may replace the space with a coding such as %20 so that the name “about me” will look like “about%20me” in your address bar which is somewhat confusing to your website visitor.


The Suffix (file extension)
The suffix is the extension to the filename and declares the type of document it is. In HTML, the suffix is either “.htm” or “.html”. These file extensions tell the browser that you are working with HTML document. Therefore, if “webpage” is the name of the HTML file the full filename could be webpage.htm            or        webpage.html