QuickRead 1: What is HTML?
| If other things
in life could be this simple. | |
| HTML stands for Hyper Text
Markup
Language and it's what we use to put stuff on the web. HTML, for all it's
hype, will probably be one of the simplest and most fun things you'll
learn in college (so forget about trying to scare yourself into believing
that this stuff is beyond you, yeah we'll let you know when the rocket
science kicks in: -).
Within just a few QuickReads from now, you will be on your way, making
"nifty" little web pages (tell your friends about it). When you look at a standard Web page, you'd usually expect to find some text and may be a few pictures and graphics. These shall be called the content of the Web page. Using HTML, we can control how this content is displayed on our favorite browsers (hopefully Netscape or Internet Explorer). If as the author of the content, you don't like how a picture is hogging most of the space, you can make it smaller. You can turn the text turquoise or if you are masochistic enough, even make it blink. The two important concepts being introduced here are that of "content," namely: text, pictures, graphics(created or chosen by the author), etc.; and that of the way it is "displayed," (using HTML instructions). The content and the instructions taken together make an HTML document or HTML file. When this HTML file is put on a specially configured computer called a web-server that is connected to the Internet, others can access and load your HTML file on to their computers using their webbrowsers and view it. (e.g. For all your class assignments you would put your HTML files on the GROVE server. This server is connected to the Internet and so will allow your friends in Alaska to access, load, and view your homepage using their browsers). To be a little more specific, once a browser loads an HTML file found at a server, it constructs according to the content and HTML display instructions found in that file, the page that you see. If the page is too long and/or too wide to fit on the screen, the browser will provide scroll bars on the sides to allow the viewer to navigate below or to the side. HTML was originally intended to be a very functional language. For instance, if a particular "text content" could be split into neat discrete parts called "title," "heading," "body," "paragraph," "blockquote," etc., using HTML, we would demarcate our text content in an HTML file as such and leave it up to the browser to interpret how each discrete part should be displayed. For some time, no one complained about the lack of control over the display of their page. But slowly, the balance of power shifted to the authors of content as the world wide web became much more than just a medium for presenting primarily textual information. It's a medium for education, commerce, entertainment and many times it's crucial and necessary that the content appear just as the author intended. With HTML 4.0 and Cascading Style Sheets, we have have a lot of creative freedom and lot to thank for. Let's get started! All the examples listed in this tutorial are designed to work correctly on Netscape Navigator 4.0 and above or Internet Explorer 4.0 and above. If you come across something that is not working as it should, do let us know. Most of this will work with Netscape 3.0 and IE 3.0 but there is no guarentee. Few web users out there are using browsers this old so you shouldn't have problems. Just a note of warning, some things don't look the same in IE as they do in Netscape. | |
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