The .HTML file extension
Every file ending in .html will be opened by a web browser after you click, or double-click, on it. If placed on a web server, it will be a page on the world wide web. Alternatively, you can save your web pages with the three letter extension .htm.
.HTML or .HTM?
For most purposes, both file extensions are identical. In some cases, you web hosting provider may have set up restrictions as to which extension should be used.
An example: simple HTML document
Place the following code in a text editor and save it as a .html file. Note that some editors will attempt to force an extention after the file name, such as .rtf or .txt; if this is the case, select "Any file" as the file type from the drop-down menu, place .html after the name of your file, and try again.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>My first HTML page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello world.</p>
</body>
</html>This should display the line "Hello world" in a browser.
Also, note that every declaration has an opening tag (<html>) and a closing tag (</html>). The same format applies for most of the tags in HTML.
Viewing HTML files
Every file with the .html is usually opened by default with a web browser. If you are placing the file on a server that is visible from the WWW, type the name of the file after the address of the server.
Example: http://www.example.com/my_html_file.html
Example.com is a special server that is reserved for use in documentation and is not available for registration.