| The control that you have using a simple tag like <P> is somewhat limited. Yes, it can start a new paragraph and move the text down on the page but that's not a really big thrill after you have done it a time or two. There is an easy way to expand the characteristics that a tag has by using something called an attribute. |
| An attribute is a named characteristic of a tag. It is placed inside the "<" and ">" brackets of the tag. The attribute has a name and may have an associated value. For example, to increase the capability of the <P> tag we can use an attribute named ALIGN. This will control the alignment of the text on the web page. The attribute ALIGN is used something like:
<P ALIGN="center">
or
<P ALIGN="left">
or
<P ALIGN="right"> |
| In this example, the attribute's name is ALIGN and its associated values are center, left, or right. |
| The effect of using the attribute can be seen in these examples: |
| If we use something like:
<P ALIGN="center">
Put me in the center.
Then the resulting text will look like:
|
| Put me in the center. |
| If we use something like:
<P ALIGN="right">
Put me on the right.
Then the resulting text will look like:
|
| Put me on the right. |
| If we use something like:
<P ALIGN="left">
Leave me on the left.
Then the resulting text will look like:
|
| Leave me on the left. |
| You may have noticed that the results of using the tag <P ALIGN="left"> looked exactly like using a plain <P> tag. That is because the ALIGN="left" attribute of the <P> tag is the default value, or the value that will be used if no ALIGN attribute is specified. |
|
|
|
| We have examined the use of attributes to expand the capabilities of our tags. Using the ALIGN attribute of the <P> tag, we can now place text on the left, right or in the center of the page. |
| In the next section, we will look at using some attributes in the <BODY> tag to control the color of our page and the text. |
|
|
|
