HTML coding?

I was just typing in my signature (I will have one soon, hopefully) when it said to use HTML coding. What is that?And also, just to be sure, what are Smilies?

Smileys are the same as Emoticons:

More if you click on: 'View more Emoticons'

Thanks. That`s nice to know, as I was wondering what is was, but I did not know that they were something that I was familier with. So do you know what HTML is? (I really don`t know what it is, I`m not asking trivia questions)

I know as much about computers as a cow knows about playing the violin.

Have a look at this page , at first sight it looks pretty informative, peppered with links - Forums - FAQ - the lot http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/

HTML is a programming language used to display web pages and is 'read' by the browser to render the web page how you designed it. Its made up of tags and you place information inside these tags depending on how you want the webpage (or HTML based signature) to look. Basic HTML is easy to learn but can get complicated when you start to add javascript (DHTML) and intergrate databases with it. (SQL) I don't think the tags will display correctly in this post so I wont try but the link above gives you the tags you will need to create a webpage or signature. Just remember to close all your tags, even tags which dont have a closing tag. HTML ignorance among many web developers has created millions of badly coded HTML documents which puts pressure on servers, takes longer to load pages and costs more money to run. To avoid an impending internet crash XML is favoured and will one day replace HTML. XML is very hard to learn without previous HTML knowledge but the way it simplifies groups of HTML documents makes it a must have to web developers and webmasters. If you only want to make an HTML signature and don't want to create web pages just copy and paste someone elses HTML and change the variables.

I use this site because they write and update the language so you know its always up to date. Some tags in older versions of HTML have been deprecated so its important to know of updates. I'll never forget creating my first link or the hair pulling I endured before I successfully made a form that sends information by email. That requires the addition of an .EML file but other than that it can all be done with simple HTML code.

You can look at the HTML code of any web page by right clicking on the page away from links etc and then selecting 'View Source'