Hi! I'm Martin. I'm 9 and I'm in fourth grade. This summer my dad was making a page about his model trains and I sat next to him and watched. Then I asked if I could type. Now I can make Web pages BY MYSELF. So I made these lessons for other kids. I typed them myself. My dad checked them.

Here is what you need:

• A computer with Notepad. It's in Start, Programs, Accessories. (If you have a Mac, use SimpleText.)
• Netscape or Internet Explorer. You are using one right now!
• A grown-up. (See the rules at the bottom.)

HTML is made of tags. A tag goes in these pointy brackets: < >. Most tags are like a light switch. One tag turns something ON and the other one turns it OFF. The OFF one has a / in it.

<B> turns bold ON. </B> turns bold OFF. That's it! B is for bold.

Every page needs these tags. My dad calls it the skeleton. I call it the bread, because everything else goes in the middle like a sandwich. Open Notepad and type this. Every bit.

The TITLE doesn't go on your page. It goes way up at the top of the window, in the blue part. Everything you want people to see goes between <BODY> and </BODY>.

1. In Notepad, click File, then Save As.
2. At the bottom it says Save as type. Change it to All Files. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
3. For the name, type test.html and click Save.
4. Now find test.html on your computer and double-click it. It opens in your Web browser. That's your page!!!

Leave Notepad open. When you change something, click File, Save, and then click Reload (Netscape) or Refresh (Internet Explorer) and you see the change. Type, save, reload. Type, save, reload. You do that a LOT.

The FONT tag changes your words. SIZE goes from 1 (teeny) to 7 (HUGE). Put this between the BODY tags:

COLOR makes words colors. My two favorite colors are lime and fuchsia. Fuchsia is a hard word. It's F-U-C-H-S-I-A. I spelled it wrong three times. If you spell it wrong you get some other color, and it's not the one you wanted.

There are 16 color names that work in every browser. My dad looked it up. Here they are: aqua, black, blue, fuchsia, gray, green, lime, maroon, navy, olive, purple, red, silver, teal, white and yellow. Orange is not one. I was sad about orange.

To color your whole page, put BGCOLOR in your BODY tag. Don't make a new BODY tag. Change the one you already have, like this:

GeoCities.us has free pictures on the clip art page. I picked the cat because he blinks and moves his tail! Here's how you get one:

1. Go to the clip art page and right-click the picture you want.
2. In Internet Explorer pick Save Picture As. In Netscape it says Save Image As.
3. Save it in the SAME folder where test.html is. The cat is called cat.gif.

Then type this in your page. WIDTH and HEIGHT tell how big it is. The cat is 36 wide and 36 tall. My dad showed me how to find out: in Internet Explorer right-click the picture and pick Properties.

You can push Enter in the middle of a tag and it still works. I did that so it fits in my yellow box. I did it in the color box too, and I do it in the link next. But don't push Enter in the middle of the quote marks.

A link is words you click on to go somewhere else. The A tag makes a link. HREF is where it goes. I thought A was for Address but my dad says it's for Anchor.

These are the rules for being on the Internet at our house. You should have them at your house too.

1. No last name. That's why I'm just Martin.
2. No town and no school. Not even a hint.
3. Ask first. Before I put something new on my page, and before I write back to anybody, I ask my dad.

My dad says grown-ups should go to HTML from Scratch by Lydia Cavanaugh. She taught typing for thirty years and now she teaches a class at the library for people who never typed a tag. She has three lessons. My dad did Lesson 1 and said it was good.