Introduction
HTML is short for Hypertext Mark-up Language. HTML is the universally used
language for constructing Web pages. It is relatively simple to understand
and easy to use. It has proved enormously flexible, allowing novices to
construct effective 'starter' pages, whilst enabling sophisticated and
complex multimedia sites to be developed. In future weeks we will be
assisting you in developing your own Home Pages, in the meantime we would
like you to familiarise yourself with HTML by looking at the Introduction to
HTML Course produced by Eric Meyer of Case Western Reserve University. There
is also a useful Barebones Guide to HTML which provides a useful reference
guide to all the tags and codes that you are likely to need.
In order to construct a Web page you need to use an HTML editor. This can be
a simple text editor, such as Notepad which comes free with Windows software (teachtext for Mac) or it can be any word processor package where you can save plain text files.
There are now a whole range of specialist HTML editors such as Hotdog, HTML
Express or HTML Notepad. Each of these is available in a limited "shareware"
version or in commercial form. Another option
if you use Microsoft Word is to use the add on Internet Assistant for Word which enables you construct Web pages
from within Word.
Netscape Navigator Version 3 Gold has the ability to edit Web Pages within the page itself, rather than have to switch between an editor (to put in the HTML codes) and
a Web Browser (to see how the page looks). This speeds up the whole process
and makes Web page production much more like What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) word processing or desk
top publishing, rather than the cumbersome 'belt and braces' systems that
are available at the moment.
Assumptions of this topic
In the writing of this document, certain assumptions have been made which
should be stated clearly.
The first is that you are using a graphical web browser such as Netscape,
Explorer, etc., and not a text-based browser such as Lynx. Explanations
and examples have been made as"universal" as possible.
The second is that you are somewhat familiar with the operation of a Web
browser and have already visited several Web sites. If this is not the case,
you should do so before starting this tutorial. If you're looking for
something which will explain various terms you've seen or heard, try the
idea Internet Web Glossary.
The third thing is that when text, or content, or things of that nature, are
mentioned it is generally not referring to what appears in the Web
browser, but the actual HTML file.