Help:Contents/HTML guidance

HTML
HTML (Hyper-text Markup Language), and its variants such as XML, is what is used to format web pages. Ultimately, every web page is set up using HTML. Wikis such as this site, however, are built in such a way that you may never need to know a speck of HTML; much of the page formatting required for most articles is amply accommodated by the Edit Menu Bar that appears when you open a page to edit it. You can do quite nicely with this as your only formatting tool. (Some browsers, notably Safari, are not supported in the current version of the underlying WikiMedia---so if you can't see the EditMenuBar, try a different browser or learn some of the wiki coding such as apostrophes and asterisks). However, there are some tasks, such as inserting tables of information, that cannot be accommodated with the EditMenuBar. For these tasks, a knowledge of HTML may be helpful for anything but the plainest display.

Some hints and tricks
Margie's tricks can be used even if you don't really understand what HTML is, or does.
 * Margie's Tips, Tricks, and Links 

Entity tags
These are specialized html "phrases" that allow you to insert special characters (like a cent sign (&cent;)) (don't omit the ';' at the end of the phrase).


 * :http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_entities.asp


 * :http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=HTML%20symbol%20reference

Color coding
It is possible to add color to your HTML tables, text boxes, and fonts. Colors are specified with HexaDecimal codes, but for some colors "name labels" can also be used. The following link takes you to a table showing the various labels.


 * Color Table

Signatures
Four tildes (~) are enough to sign and date your contributions to talk pages. But you may find it useful to create a specialized signature. Some instructions may be found at:


 * Signature