Text Alignment

In this early years, the Internet presented informtion in pain text format only - line after line of plain text. Although many people today think of Web graphics first, text continues to play an important role in internet information design. Web page developers have an increadible and evergrowing array of options for formating text.

Formatting text can help to organize and hightlight key pieces of information, or even make dull or complex content easier to read.

Formatting Paragraphs

Paragraphs are the bais text component of Web documents. You use the <P> tag to announce the beginning of a new paragraph

In a Web document, a paragraph is one or more lines of text that are kept together on a page. A paragraph may or may not include line breaks.

Activity

1. In NotePad, open the index.htm page
2. In the "body" area type in at least 3 lines of text about yourself and what you hope to get out of this course.
3. Before the first character of the first sentence, type the <P> tag
4. At the end of your second sentence, type the <P> tag
5. Save the page as index.htm and then view it in a web browser
6. You should see a "paragraph" break between the first and second lines.

Creating Block Quotes

The Block Quote tag signals a browser to treet text in a special way. The block quote format is often used in text documents to draw attention to the content of a paragraph

Block quotes are indented sections of text used to offset particular elements of a document.

The following text is a block quote

The “Web” is recognized nearly everywhere as the fastest growing communication medium in all of history. Terms once regarded as high-tech, such as Web site, browser, and hyperlink have become mainstream.

The “Web” or “World Wide Web,” is the area of the Internet that allows you to display text and graphics and play videos, aqnd movies. With appropriate equipment, you can even receive and broadcast live audio and video.

The Web consists of a network of Internet servers, called Web sites. Web pages are individual documents often connected to onterh Internet documents by hyperlinks. Hyperlinks offer you many options for accessing information quickly and easily on the Web.

To add the Block Quote to a text item... add the tag <BLOCKQUOTE> before the area you wanted blockquoted and </BLOCKQUOTE> to stop the block quote.

Using the Preformat Tag

The <PRE> tag and its required closing tag, </PRE>, define an area in which browsers display text exactly as it is typed in the HTML document. Normally, a browser ignores spaces and tabs, but the Preformat tags allw you to insert spaces or even tabs, although not recommended, to arrange your text and signal the browser to keep your arrangement .

However, the <PRE> tag limits you to a monospace font, usually Courier, which does not make lively Web text. You can, however, use the <PRE> tag to create a simple two-column table, like people's names and their birthdays. You can also use it when it is necessary to preserve the original text formatting for any reason, as in reporting statistical data

The Preformat tag can save your time, especially before you learn to creat tables in HTML.

With <PRE>

	  John Smith       1/1/65
	  Betty Smith      1/1/65
	  Susan Smith      1/1/65  the baby
   </PRE>

Without <PRE>

John Smith 1/1/65

Betty Smith 1/1/65

Susan Smith 1/1/65 the baby

Formatting Text

HTML allows you to specify attributes for many tags in your HTML documents. YOu use some text attributes to enhance the appearance of txt in your HTML documents.

Text attributes are HTML codes you use to offset or emphasize text in HTML documents.

Adding Text Attributes

There are two types of attribute tags for HTML text: content-based tags and format-specific tags.

Content-based tags signal the browser to interpret the purpose or content of the text. Although all browsers recognize content-based tags, each may display the marked text in a differnet way.

Format-specific tags define the appearance of the text but do not provide specification about its content.

The Address tag is an example of a content-based tag. It does not specify a format, but it does specify a type of content that all browsers recognize. When you use the Address tag, you are identifying the content but allowing the browser to determine the format.

The <B></B> tag is an example of a format-specific tag. It spells out the desired appearance of the text, but it specifies nothing about the content. Here, the browser follows your formatting instruction.

Apart from their immediate uses in HTML, there is another reason to look carefully at the difference between content-based and format-specific tags. The current direction in HTML development and related technologies tends to separate the two types of tages in the design of HTML documents.

The following table shows some common content-based tags and their format-specific equivalents. The Content-Based Tag conlumn contains the type of content that determins the tag result. In contrast, you can apply the tags in the Format-Specific tag column to any type of text or text content.

Activity: attributes