What is HTML?
HTML stands for the HyperText Markup Language. HTML code is the major language of the Internet’s World Wide Web. Web sites and web pages are written in HTML code. With HTML code and the world wide web, you have the ability to bring together text, pictures, sounds, and links… all in one place! HTML code files are plain text files, so they can be composed and edited on any type of computer… Windows, Mac, UNIX, whatever.
HTML is a computer language devised to allow website creation. These websites can then be viewed by anyone else connected to the Internet. It is relatively easy to learn, with the basics being accessible to most people in one sitting; and quite powerful in what it allows you to create. It is constantly undergoing revision and evolution to meet the demands and requirements of the growing Internet audience under the direction of the » W3C, the organisation charged with designing and maintaining the language. The definition of HTML is HyperText Markup Language. • HyperText is the method by which you move around on the web — by clicking on special text called hyperlinks which bring you to the next page. The fact that it is hyper just means it is not linear — i.e. you can go to any place on the Internet whenever you want by clicking on links — there is no set order to do things in. • Markup is what HTML tags do to the text inside them. They mark it as a certain type of text (italicised text
There are different codes for all sorts of other formatting including italics, tables, paragraphs etc. The “A” tag is used to designate words that are to be displayed as hyperlinks to other pages. If you would like to view a sample of HTML, a good place to start might be the code that was used to generate this very page. Simply click on the “view” menu on your browser and then select “source”. It may look complicated, but if you learned the limited number of tags, you would discover that it is a relatively straightforward language.
Handy Tip: The best way to learn how to write html is to look at the source code behind every webpage. To look at the source code choose “View” from the top browser tool bar and click “Source”. This then shows the code in Notepad and you can even save it to play around with the html code and see what each line does.
Hyper Text Markup Language – Web pages are basically text documents such as those used in Microsoft Word or Notepad that contain instructions to browsers about how the documents should be displayed. These instructions, the html, describe fonts, colours and styles to be used when displaying text etc.
