Welcome to the MRC Biostatistics Unit's definitive HTML guide for beginners, which has recently been updated for 2000. This guide is aimed both at those who have never scripted Web pages before, and those who want to brush up their basic skills or learn new tricks.

Please note that it is NOT a strict guide to any of the latest HTML standards. We are aware that standards are moving extremely quickly at the moment, and it's hard to keep up. This guide makes no claims to conform to the very latest formal specifications, nor do we plan to make it do so, at least until the picture becomes more clear! This guide, however, covers HTML scripting which works in the 4th and 5th generation browsers. We have added several new links to valuable external sites, and greatly expanded the coverage of style sheets, as well as making a raft of other updates and corrections.

The main topics covered are those listed in the link table on the left. Peripheral subjects such as CGI scripting, forms handling, Java applets and JavaScript are not covered, simply because they're not part of HTML, and not suitable for beginners.

Use the list on the left to choose the various sections of the guide. Your current page will always be highlighted in the list, so you know which section you're in, and every section of the guide contains two sets of lists for convenience, at the top and bottom of each page. If you experience any problems with the guide, please let us know by mailing the author. We've provided a link at the bottom of all pages. Good luck!