Web Browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Safari, and FireFox are all examples of web browsers) use various codes or languages. HTML, javascript, and XML are examples of some of the languages your web browser may "speak". And if you want to speak to a web browser, you have to use one of the codes it speaks, otherwise, it won't understand you!

HTML uses what we call "tags". A tag is just a little piece of information inside a pair of "greater than" and "less than" symbols. Tags tell a web browser what to do. One of the simplest tags is one to make text bold.

Here's what the HTML code to make text bold looks like:

bold

The first tag () says to the browser "Turn on bold lettering now.", and the second tag () says "Turn off bold lettering now."

Easy, right? Some tags are a little more complicated. There are table tags, row tags, hyperlink tags, and many many more. We have a very basic HTML encoder on this page.  Enter some text in the encoder, and then type the words you would like to have special formatting applied to.  Our encoder is not very sophisticated; it's very easy to confuse it - can you figure out how?