First; what is html?

From Wikipedia: -

“HTML, an acronym for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of “tags” that are surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code (such as JavaScript) that can affect the behaviour of Web browsers and other HTML processors.”

It would therefore be logical to assume that an .html file is a file that contains hypertext markup language; and so it is.

(Some html files use the filename extension (suffix) “.htm”. It is a throwback to the days before Windows NT and VFAT, when the FAT file system of the time could only handle files with an 8-character filename followed by a 3-character file-extension after the dot. – Therefore .html wouldn’t have been understood, and it was shortened to .htm. Windows-based computers to this day still read the .htm file extension as if it were .html.)

So how do you create an html or htm file? The method for doing so is simply typing the html content into a text file, and then renaming the file with a .html or .htm suffix.

For example: I want to create an html file containing the hypertext content of this web page that I’ve written so far.

To do so I open up a text editor such as WordPad and type the html content I wish to use into the file and save it, thus:

Then I rename the file from test.txt to test.htm: -

The icon changes automatically to that of the browser you’re using as default browser at the time; in this case Firefox.

- And that’s all there is to it. You can now open your newly created html file in your browser simply by clicking on it: -

- ‘Piece of cake.