Saving and Viewing the Page

To view your own page in a browser, you must first save it. Because you've created an HTML document, you want to save your file with an .htm extension (first.htm, for example) so that you recognize it quickly.

Caution

Some people prefer to name their HTML files with an .html extension (for example, first.html). Some older computer systems, however, still require the file extension to be three characters or fewer and might have trouble reading (or storing) a file with a longer extension.

You can preview any HTML file in your browser, even when that file is stored on your computer rather than on a Web server. In Internet Explorer, you can view your new file by selecting Open from the File menu. Figure 2.2 shows how Internet Explorer displays the first.htm file that you created in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.2. My First Web Page as it appears in the Internet Explorer browser. Notice that the Title bar contains the text between the `<title>` and `</title>` tags and the body of the browser contains the text between the `<body>` and `</body>` tags.

Tip

Although you don't see them, HTML commands are sitting behind the scenes of every document that you open in your Web browser. You can see the HTML commands by selecting Source from the View menu of Internet Explorer (other browsers might use different menu commands). When you find a page on the Web that you like, you can view the source code to learn how you can use HTML to create something similar.

Caution

Some Web pages use frames to display more than one HTML page at the same time. (See Lesson 10, "Creating Frames.") To view the source code for this type of page, make sure that you use your mouse to highlight some portion of the page you're interested in before selecting Source from the View menu.

Figure 2.2. My First Web Page as it appears in the Internet Explorer browser. Notice that the Title bar contains the text between the <title> and </title> tags and the body of the browser contains the text between the <body> and </body> tags.

Figure 2.2. My First Web Page as it appears in the Internet Explorer browser. Notice that the Title bar contains the text between the `<title>` and `</title>` tags and the body of the browser contains the text between the `<body>` and `</body>` tags.