part 3: HTML

HTML

HTML ("HyperText Markup Language") is the language in which web pages are written.

HTML is a great beginner computer language (although there are those who argue that it is not a language in the proper sense) because examples of source code are as close as your favorite web page. You can easily see the source code of any web page by using the menu: view-page source (simply view-source in IE).

HTML is composed of tags. Tags indicate to the browser what it is supposed to do with a piece of text. Most HTML tags have three components: The beginning tag, the affected text, and the end tag.

For example, the tag makes text bold:

This sentence is bold.

The HTML code for the sentence above is:

This sentence is bold.

The "" is the beginning tag.

"This sentence is bold." is the affected text.

The is the end tag.

Tags are also used to include images in a web page:

The HTML code that I used to include the above image is:

<img src="../images/smily.gif">

Image tags are examples of tags that do not have end tags. You will also notice that the full URL of the image is not required. We'll see why this is when we discuss hyperlinks.

All HTML documents must include certain tags:

<HTML></HTML>: This tag is found at the beginning and end of all web pages.

<HEAD></HEAD>: The information between these tags include information about the page that is not directly displayed on the page itself, including the title and information about the page like the author and the HTML editor used.

<BODY></BODY>: The information between these tags is what is displayed on the page itself.

Nowadays, most HTML authoring is done with an HTML editor like FrontPage, Netscape Editor, or HotDog. These programs take a lot of the effort out of web authoring by allowing the developer to work with their pages in an environment that is very similar to word processing. There are also many die-hards who choose to continue to "hand tag" (type out the HTML coding for) their web pages.

While it is extremely helpful to be familiar with HTML for web authoring, it is not necessary.

PART 2 PART 4

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