HTML: The Language That Makes the Web Go 'Round
HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language), the simple programming language that most of the Web is based upon, was originally created as a means to post and cross-reference academic papers.
Who knew this humble little language would be the key to an information revolution? Interested in learning a little about the origins of HTML? Read our Introduction to SGML. Otherwise, let's forge on.
How does HTML work?
HTML works more or less like this: You create a document in plain text (also known as ASCII text). You save this document with the ".html" extension so that browsers will know that it's a Web page. Within the document, you write bracketed instructions called "tags" to tell your browser how and where to render a word or image. (If you've ever used the "reveal codes" command in an older word processor, you've seen similar ways of blocking out text to be bolded, italicized, or underlined --- this is the "markup" of the markup language). HTML documents then have to be posted on a server. Once the document is saved on a server it has an address --- that's the "http://www.something.com/...", known as the uniform resource locator, or URL. Browsers, like Netscape Communicator or Internet Explorer, use this address to locate the Web site on the server and translate the HTML code into the pictures, words, and links on the Web pages through which you surf. (For more on specific browsers, see the Internet channel's BrowserUser.)
All HTML documents begin and end with the
<HTML> and </HTML> tags,
respectively, and the content of the page is
contained within these two crucial tags. Other tags that
denote the name of the page, where the main content
(called the "body") starts, and so on, are nested within
the HTML tags, like this:
<HTML>
<BODY>
<H1>This is where you would write a headline</H1>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Most tags have to be used in pairs; for example, if you
wanted to italicize the word "headline" your code would
look like this: <I>headline</I> Note that in all the closing
tags the "/" tells the browser where to stop what the first
tag started.
If you want to create a hotlink on a page you use the
anchor tag, <A HREF> and </A>, and throw in the URL for
the site you want to link to. For example, the hot link in
the previous sentence to the word "URL" looked like this:
<A HREF="http://www3.zdnet.com/yil/content/surfschool/lingo/
lingo_u.html#URL">URL</A>
HTML tags cover much more than the style of the text. Tags exist to change fonts, create lists, arrange items in tables on a page, or in frame sets, and more.
Find out more about HTML and making your own Web pages. Check out ZDNet's HTMLUser.