I don’t know a lick of HTML code. I hope to go to school and learn one of these days, but in the meantime I’m using Netscape Composer. However, sometimes when I try to insert an HTML tag, I get the error message “Premature Closure of Tag.” What does this mean and how do I fix it?? Can anyone help or should I just look for “HTML for Dummies”?
Thanks 
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
I’m not familiar with the nutscrape tools, but I’m going to take a wild crack and say you’ve forgot to close quotes before you close the angle iron. (hope this turns out)
wrong: <A HREF="www.nowhere.com >
right: < A HREF=“www.nowhere.com” >
OR you have improperly nested tags
wrong: <FONT COLOR=RED><B>text</FONT></B>
right: <FONT COLOR=RED><B>text</B></FONT>
Sounds like you’re closing your tag (your closing tag looks like your beginning tag, only with a / in front of it, like <b> </b>((I’m assuming you don’t know anything about HTML so don’t be offended)) before you put anything in it. So all you have to do is put something inside the tag to make it happy, like this <b>hi!< /b> It sounds like a warning more than a problem with your code. I haven’t used Netscape Composer, though. You young’uns…I used to write my code in Notepad! And I had to walk uphill both ways to school, too! 
Hoping the codes work on this message…
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
Could be any of the above or maybe something else. Why don’t you post here some of what you’ve coded.
It might be (what the hey, lets confuse him even more) that you have a close tag for something that hasn’t got an opener.
I hate all these wysiwyg tools that say “even you, a total loser that talks to his mouse, can make a professional looking webpage!” which is a total LIE!
Okay, so I’m a web designer who handcodes, okay?
(Gasp) You had notepad? I used to write my code with edlin!
(Gasp) I had to learn vi before I even got to do HTML code! You lucky bastard.
lovelee
(Gasp) You mean you guys never had to learn to use an IBM punch card machine? Or even a paper tape reader? What are they teaching these days, my god!
They let you use vi? Ha, slacker! All I got was a bank of toggle switches and a wall full of lights.
Toggle switches and a wall full of lights would be easier to use than vi. feh
Tom~
I haven’t coded a single thing, that’s the problem. I really don’t know any HTML, I just “borrow” it from other sources (that say, cut and paste the HTML below; I ain’t a plagariser!). Sometimes it works great, and sometimes I get this “error” message.
Anyhoo, the bit of code that’s giving me fits this time is at http://www.ida.net/users/elaine/pedigre2.htm
To me, it all looks totally incomprehensible. Is this the wrong forum to ask for a crash course in coding, or should I just buy the aforementioned “Dummies” book?
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Can you link us to the page you have put your code in? I C&P’ed the code from the pages you linked to and it worked fine for me. You may have accidentally deleted a bit of it.
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
Gr8Kat: I don’t know a lick of HTML code. I hope to go to school and learn one of these days, but in the meantime I’m using Netscape Composer.
Try this site to learn HTML, Perl, and all sorts of other things about Web programming:
The Web Developers’ Virtual Library
Netscape Composer won’t let me add the tag to my page until whatever it is that it perceives as a problem is fixed. I’ve tried recopying and repasting the code, but I keep getting the “premature close of tag” error. And Netscape is bound and determined to not let any “errors” be pasted in, even if maybe I want them there.
GuanoLad said:
Yeah yeah yeah, bite me
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
You can email me the code if you like; just C&P it into an email. sburch@pcquote.com. But first try pasting it into Notepad (in your “accesories”) and save it as foo.html or whatever, and open it in your browser. It may be a problem with Composer and not your code. I suspect, though, that the problem is that your are pasting a page within a page, and that is what is the problem. If you have two </HTML&rt; and </body&rt; tags in your page, delete the first one.
If you want to learn what you’re doing, I recommend picking up a quick start HTML book. I hate online tutorials.
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
Hey, yeah, that worked.
Yeah, that could be, I’m just going to have to use notepad. But now I have another question; sometimes the code I’m trying to insert isn’t for a whole new page. Like the code on this page:
http://www.wunderground.com:88/geo/InfoboxBannerPromo/US/OR/Dallas.html
This is something I want in an existing page, and I still get the “premature close of tag” error. Am I just going to have to resign myself to a weatherless home page?
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Thanks everyone for your help! By fiddling around and inserting the code in Notepad, then sending it back to Netscape Composer, I was able to do some of the stuff I couldn’t do before Thanks again for the advice!
I may learn how to do this for real yet
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
If you need more help, check out the the HTML tutoral.
See? I wasn’t picking on you, Gr8Kat, I was picking on things like Frontpage and Composer, that present you with the illusion that you are creating a webpage, when really it’s making a mess of things that needs constant cleanup.
Claris Homepage does a pretty good job without any dicking around with html.