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What is HTML?
HTML or HyperText Markup Language is a universal non-proprietary information format. It allows information to be displayed in the same way it was originally designed across different platforms, operating systems and web browsers. As the name suggests it is a form of advanced or marked-up text which uses tags such as <p> and </p> to structure text.
This standard is controlled by an organisation called the W3C (or World Wide Web Consortium). Information about this standard as well as other web standards can be found on their website www.w3.org.
What programs do I need?
You do not need any special program to create HTML pages. A basic webpage can be built using notepad (under Programs>Accessories in the Start menu on ALL windows versions) or any other text editor.
Even though this is the case there are a number of programs which make this easier by doing the hard work for you. These programs work rather like Microsoft Word or other word processors by allowing you to highlight words and make them bold or select sentences and change fonts without having to actually write the sometimes complex code.
Some programs that do this which you might have access to or have seen include;
Some HTML editors which are FREEWARE from www.download.com include;
It is important to note that some of these like Webfoot are HTML editors which still require you to have a fair understanding of code while others like Selida are full featured WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) editors. I would recommend using those supplied with Netscape or Mozilla web browsers for being the easiest and best.
What is a HTML file?
You can identify HTML files because they are saved as example.html or example.htm. The only difference between these is that some file systems can only support 3 letter extensions (*.htm) whereas today most computers can handle any extension.
These files are simply text files and can be opened in any text editor. It is the tags like <b> or </b> which tell the web browsers what the file is and how it is to be layed out.
In this short workshop you will understand how to construct a basic webpage. If you have any further information or are still unsure plenty of further information is available on the web. The W3C has a 10-minute guide at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Overview.html which covers similiar material.
Converting a sentence to HTML
Consider the following sentence:
UNSW Science Communication is a great degree.
If I add formatting to this sentence it could look like this:
UNSW Science Communication is a great degree.
If I was to write this in HTML it would look like this:
<b>UNSW</b> <u>Science Communication</u> is a <i>great</i> degree.
It is the tags which identify the appropriate formatting:
<b>UNSW</b> <u>Science Communication</u> is a <i>great</i> degree.
The tags are effectively describing how we want the text displayed. Each attribute has a starting and an ending tag.
How do I find out all these tags?
One of the advantages of the WYSIWYG web page design programs is that you don't. They will do most of the hard work for you however you still need to understand how it works in order to be able to make changes that the programs can't.
One important issue is that while HTML is a standard not all web browsers conform to that standard. This means that Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator (& Mozilla) can take the same page and display it differently.
To make it easy
www.ncdesign.org produces a HTML Design
Guide which not only makes it easy to find what each tag does but also tells you
which tags are compatible with which web browser.