HTML--What is this stuff?

Web pages are written in HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML files are just standard text files that you can edit with Notepad if you want. You put commands (called tags) in the files that tell a browser how to display the information. HTML tags are enclosed in less-than and greater-than signs. For example, if you want text to be shown in boldface, you would put the actual text <B>boldface</B> into the HTML file. Simple, right?

Well, kind of. Take a look at this page in two different browsers. Try Microsoft's Internet Explorer and then check it out in Netscape Navigator. Notice the differences in the way they are displayed, especially in font sizes and spacing. How can the same HTML look so different?

Believe it or not, some of this is by design. HTML doesn't let you specify exactly how a page will be displayed on the screen. That's up to the browser software, and it will depend on items such as:

Current dimensions of the browser's window;
Screen resolution and system font size;
PC video color depth (16, 256, 64K colors);
Browser preferences for fonts and point sizes set by the user;
What fonts are installed on the system;
Whether (or how) the browser supports the HTML feature you're using.

By using at least two browsers to view your HTML file while you're creating it, you can make sure the layout doesn't stink on any of them.

Learning HTML

The "code" in an HTML file looks nothing like the output from any browser. That's because the browser takes the HTML file you've created and "processes" it to get the actual layout. For example, the browser will take all white-space (spaces, tabs, new lines) and squish it down to a single space. That means it's not good enough to put a blank line in the file to separate two paragraphs. You have to tell the browser that "a new paragraph begins here" by using the <P> tag.

The best way to figure this stuff out is to look at a page with your browser, then use View/Source to see the HTML that created it. You can also save the HTML to a file and clip out the pieces you need. That's the way I suggest you use this file.

For example, take a look at the HTML in this document. You'll see a few comments in the file that don't print; that's because they're enclosed in a special set of

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