HTML Help - Useful HTML Tags To Customize Your Page

From Theresa Coffey, TNT Editor..at SBI!

Want to "spruce up" your page with some advanced programming features or custom HTML tags? Here's a selection of common "tags" you can use to customize your page. Refer to this page for a quick refresher whenever you are building or editing a page...

Bold

Use the <B>BOLD</B> tag to highlight/bolden a word. For example, <B>fast</B> results in fast.

Special Note: Anytime you opt to use a "tag" (except for the <P> and <BR> tags), always remember to close that tag. In other words, if you decide to place some text in bold with the <B> tag, but forget to put in the closing </B> tag, ALL your text following the tag will be bold.

Italic

Use the <I>ITALIC</I> tag to italicize a word. For example, <I>fast</I> results in fast.

Color

To put the word "apple" into the color "red," as an example, use
<FONT COLOR=RED>apple</FONT> which results in apple.

Simply stating the color will work for the common colors -- as you can see,
<FONT COLOR=BLUE>sky</FONT> results in sky.

You can do the same for other colors -- simply replace "red" or "blue" above with the word "yellow" or "green" or "purple" or "orange" or "navy."

For an explanation of HEX code and full color selection, see...

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/colors.html

New paragraph

<P> breaks a new paragraph. Use this instead of two carriage returns. If you have several paragraphs to do, just put them all in one Text Block, each paragraph separated by <P> tag -- this is much more convenient than using several Text Blocks, each separated by a Line Break Block.

Special Note for MAC Users: Because of weird Mac IE browser glitch, keep all text on one long line and don't use the double carriage return to indicate a paragraph -- use the <P> tag instead, to break paragraphs. Then you can copy-and-paste all the text as one long line into the text block

Break tags

Break tags are usually faster than using the "Line Break block"...

<BR><BR> is a routine line-break tag.

<br clear="all"> This will clear text beyond (not wrap around your graphic).

Special Note: If you have a photo aligned to the left of your page and you want to have the text follow along on the right hand side of the photo, use one or more <BR> tags to position the text appropriately.

When should you use, or not use, break tags?

Keep in mind these guidelines...

1. TEXT BLOCK (CENTER) after TEXT BLOCK (LEFT) = "no need" for break tag

2. TEXT BLOCK (LEFT) after GRAPHIC BLOCK (NONE) (where the graphic comes right after TEXT BLOCK (CENTER)) = "no need" for a break tag

3. TEXT BLOCK (LEFT) wrapping around GRAPHIC BLOCK (LEFT)(where the graphic comes after TEXT BLOCK (LEFT) = <br clear="all"><br clear="all"> (if you want a new paragraph to start below the graphic)

4. TEXT BLOCK (CENTER) after GRAPHIC BLOCK (CENTER) = <br clear="all"><br clear="all"> in the text following the graphic.

5. Put a regular break tag, <BR>, after a TEXT BLOCK (CENTER) which is to be a label above a GRAPHIC BLOCK (NONE).

6. Put a regular break tag, <BR>, after a TEXT BLOCK (LEFT), if you want a photo on next line.

Link Tag

Create a link by putting an "A HREF" tag around the text or graphic that you want to become a link. But use links from the Link Library if you want to be able to track those links through Click Analysis.

However, if you just want to create a non-trackable link that says...

Go to abc.com

Then you'd enter the following into your text block (no need to create a new block, just enter it with the rest of the text)...

<A HREF="http://www.abc.com">Go to abc.com</A>

See the first part (<A HREF=")? That's the opening "link tag" (also called "anchor tag"). The </A> closes it and the URL is where the link will go to.

Special Note: Always open your external links in a new browser window. For doing this you will have to add to your link code: target="_blank"

In this case your code will be:

<A HREF="http://www.abc.com" target="_blank">Go to abc.com</A>

Try it by clicking on the link above.

Resources: