The eternal question... Well, actually, no. But still, it obviously puzzles enough people. Let’s get some answers to the basic and most frequently asked questions first then...?
HTML is a formal Recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is generally adhered to by the major browsers, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator, which also provide some additional non-standard codes.
The current version of HTML is HTML 5.0. However, both Internet Explorer and Netscape implement some features differently and provide non-standard extensions. Web developers using the more advanced features of HTML 5 may have to design pages for both browsers and send out the appropriate version to a user.
Significant features in HTML 5 are sometimes described in general as dynamic HTML. What is sometimes referred to as HTML 5 is an extensible form of HTML called Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML).
What can I use HTML for?
If you want to make websites, there is no way around HTML. Even if you're using a program to create websites, such as Dreamweaver, a basic knowledge of HTML can make life a lot simpler and your website a lot better. The good news is that HTML is easy to learn and use. In just two lessons from now you will have learned how to make your first website.
HTML is used to make websites. It is as simple as that!
Okay, but what does H-T-M-L stand for?
HTML is an abbreviation of "HyperText Mark-up Language" - which is already more than you need to know at this stage. However, for the sake of good order, let us explain in greater detail.
- Hyper is the opposite of linear. In the good old days - when a mouse was something the cat chased - computer programs ran linearly: when the program had executed one action it went to the next line and after that, the next line and so on. But HTML is different - you can go wherever you want and whenever you want. For example, it is not necessary to visit MSN.com before you visit HTML.net.
- Text is self-explanatory.
- Mark-up is what you do with the text. You are marking up the text the same way you do in a text editing program with headings, bullets and bold text and so on.
- Language is what HTML is. It uses many English words.
In this tutorial you will learn so-called XHTML (Extensible HyperText Mark-up Language) which, in short, is a new and more well-structured way of writing HTML.
How does it work?
HTML consists of a series of short codes typed into a text-file by the site author — these are the tags. The text is then saved as a html file, and viewed through a browser, like Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. This browser reads the file and translates the text into a visible form, hopefully rendering the page as the author had intended. Writing your own HTML entails using tags correctly to create your vision. You can use anything from a rudimentary text-editor to a powerful graphical editor to create HTML pages.
What are the tags up to?
The tags are what separate normal text from HTML code. You might know them as the
words between the <angle-brackets>. They allow all the cool stuff like images and tables and stuff, just by telling your browser what to render on the page. Different tags will perform different functions. The tags themselves don’t appear when you view your page through a browser, but their effects do. The simplest tags do nothing more than
apply formatting to some text, like this:
<b>These words will be bold</b>
In the example above, the <b> tags were wrapped around some text, and their effect will be that the contained text will be bolded when viewed through an ordinary web browser.
Do I have to be online all the time?
Not at all. You can code your entire website offline,
storing it all on your own computer, and then just transfer all the files onto the web. Then whenever you have new content, you just add that to the existing online version of your site. It’s really quite simple.
Is there anything HTML can’t do?
Of course, but since making websites became more popular and needs increased many other supporting languages have been created to allow new stuff to happen, plus HTML ismodified every few years to make way for improvements.
Cascading Stylesheets are used to control how your pages are presented, and make pages more accessible. Basic special effects and interaction is provided by JavaScript, which adds a lot of power to basic HTML. Most of this advanced stuff is for later down the road, but when using all of these technologies together, you have a lot of power at your disposal.
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