What is HTML?

H-T-M-L are initials that stand for HyperText Markup Language (computer people love initials and acronyms — you’ll be talking acronyms ASAP). Let me break it down for you:

 

• Hyper is the opposite of linear. It used to be that computer programs had to move in a linear fashion. This before this, this before this, and so on. HTML does not hold to that pattern and allows the person viewing the World Wide Web page to go anywhere, any time they want.
• Text is what you will use. Real, honest to goodness English letters.
• Mark up is what you will do. You will write in plain English and then mark up what you wrote. More to come on that in the next Primer.

• Language because they needed something that started with “L” to finish HTML and Hypertext Markup Louie didn’t flow correctly. Because it’s a language, really — but the language is plain English.
• The Word ProcessorWhen you write to the word processor you will need to follow a few steps:1. Write the page as you would any other document.2. When you go to save the document (Here’s the trick), ALWAYS choose SAVE AS.

  3. When the SAVE AS box pops up, you will need to save the page in a specific format. Look at the SAVE AS dialogue box when it pops up: Usually at the bottom, you find where you will be able to change the file format.

  4. If you have a PC, save your document as ASCII TEXT DOS or just TEXT. Either one will work.

  5. If you have a MAC, save your document as TEXT.

  HTML TUTORIAL

  Audience

  This tutorial is designed for the aspiring Web Designers and Developers with a need to understand the HTML in enough detail along with its simple overview, and practical examples. This tutorial will give you enough ingredients to start with HTML from where you can take yourself at higher level of expertise.

  Prerequisites

  Before proceeding with this tutorial you should have a basic working knowledge with Windows or Linux operating system, additionally you must be familiar with −

  • Experience with any text editor like notepad, notepad++, or Edit plus etc.
  • How to create directories and files on your computer.
  • How to navigate through different directories.
  • How to type content in a file and save them on a computer.
  • Understanding about images in different formats like JPEG, PNG formate.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the most widely used language to write Web Pages.

• Hypertext refers to the way in which Web pages (HTML documents) are linked together. Thus, the link available on a webpage is called Hypertext.
• As its name suggests, HTML is a Markup Languagewhich means you use HTML to simply “mark-up” a text document with tags that tell a Web browser how to structure it to display.

Originally, HTML was developed with the intent of defining the structure of documents like headings, paragraphs, lists, and so forth to facilitate the sharing of scientific information between researchers.

Now, HTML is being widely used to format web pages with the help of different tags available in HTML language

Lingua Franca for the Web

HTML is intended as a common medium for tying together information from widely different sources. A means to rise above the interoperability problems with existing document formats, and a means to provide a truly open interface to proprietary information systems.

Simplicity

The first version of HTML was designed to be extremely simple, both to author and to write browsers for. This has played a major role in the incredibly rapid growth of the World Wide Web. HTML 3.0 provides a clean superset of HTML 2.0 adding high value features such as tables, text flow around figures and math, while still remaining a simple document format. The pressures to adopt the complexities of traditional SGML applications has been resisted, for example the Department of Defense’s CALS table model or the ISO 12083 math DTD.

Scaleability

As time goes by, people’s expectations change, and more will be demanded of HTML. One manifestation of this is the pressure to add yet more tags. HTML 3.0 introduces a means for subclassing elements in an open-ended way. This can be used to distinguish the role of a paragraph element as being a couplet in a stansa, or a mathematical term as being a tensor.

Platform Independence

HTML is designed to allow rendering on a very wide range of devices, from clunky teletypes, to terminals, DOS, Windows, Macs and high end Workstations, as well as non-visual media such as speech and braille. In this, it allows users to exploit the legacy of older equipment as well as the latest and best of new machines. HTML 3.0 provides for improved support for non-graphical clients, allowing for rich markup in place of the figures shown on graphical clients.

Content not Presentation Markup

Information providers are used to tight control over the final appearence of documents. The need for platform independence weighs against this, but there is still a strong pressure to find appropriate means for information providers to express their intentions

Support for Cascaded Style Sheets

         HTML 3.0 supports style sheets via the use of the LINK element to reference a style sheet with a URI. Authors can place overrides in separate style sheets or include them in the document head within the STYLE element. The effectiveness of caching mechanisms for speeding up the retrieval of style sheets is enhanced by the separation of style information into generic commonly used style sheets, and overrides specific to this document.

Support for Non-Visual Media

HTML 3.0 is designed to cater for the needs of the visually impaired. Markup for inline figures includes support for rich descriptions, along with hypertext links that double up as defining geometric hotzones for graphical browsers, simplifying the author’s job in catering for the different groups of users. Table markup includes provision for abbreviated row and column names for each cell, which are essential for conversion to speech or braille. Math markup treats formulae and equations as hierarchies of expressions. This allows disambiguating pauses to be inserted in appropriate places during conversion to speech.

Support for different ways of creating HTML

HTML 3.0 has been designed to be created in a variety of different ways. It is deliberately simple enough to type in by hand. It can be authored using wysiwyg editors for HTML, or it can be generated via export filters from common word processing formats, or other SGML applications.