Introduction
Overview
History
Advice
IDE
Books
Tutorials

Beginners
Introduction
Text Formatting
Images
Tables
Forms
Entities/Colors

Advanced
Frames
Image Maps
Stylesheets
Reference

Community
Web Sites
Mailing Lists
USENET
Vendors
News

GBIC >> HTML >> Overview

Overview
All web pages are HTML files, which are simply text files that include instructions to a browser on how to display the content of the file. The instructions are also text and might look something like this: text, which simply means to display the word text in bold, like this: text. Learning HTML is entirely about learning the text commands (called tags) that direct the browser on how to display the content of the HTML files. You can use any text editor (such as Notepad) to create HTML files or you can choose to use specialized HTML editors which can simplify the effort it takes to enter the commands.

As you will see, the embedded text commands can also perform other functions, such as directing the browser to display a picture or to display a completely different HTML page. Both user interaction with a web page and animation of its content are also possible by using the appropriate HTML code within a page.

Introduction Tags Browsers

Return to top of document

Introduction

Just about everyone has accidentally opened a Word document in a text editor and seen what appears to be gibberish - unreadable text. The content of a Word document consists of the text that is to be displayed as well as proprietary, non-text codes which gives Word instructions on how to display the text.

HTML files are similar in that they consist of the text to be displayed, along with codes which give a browser instructions on how to display the text. In the case of an HTML file, however, the instructions themselves are also plain text. Plain text is the most common file format in the world and is not the intellectual property of any company, making it an ideal choice for the language of the world wide web. Additionally, all operating systems come with free text editors so everyone has easy access to the basic tool needed for creating HTML pages.

With a list of the approximately 100 HTML tags at hand, a web page author can create a web page in just minutes. Most HTML tags are named for easy recognition ( for bold, for underline, ...) so most web page authors quickly memorize the codes they use most frequently. Additionally, as the web has grown in popularity there have been a number of applications developed which simplify entry of the approximately one hundred available HTML tags - by providing WYSIWYG interfaces that automatically add the HTML tags for the author.

Return to top of document

Tags

The HTML commands to the browser consist of tag pairs which operate on the text between the tag pairs. For example, and form a tag pair which tells the browser to display in bold all content between the two tags. All HTML commands to the browser operate on this same basic concept.

It's common to see an HTML page contain as many as 50 tag pairs, out of a total of about one hundred available tag pairs (not all browsers support exactly the same number of tag pairs).

The standard web page consists of four tag pairs - html, title, head, and body. The individual tags are enclosed with less-than and greater-than symbols. The second tag of a tag pair is always the first tag preceded by the forward slash. The following example shows the basic tags that comprise every web page:

   <html>
   <head>
   <title></title>
   </head>
   <body>
   </body>
   </html>

The content of the web page goes between the body tags. The other tags contain statistics or other summary information about the web page itself. You may also have noticed that a tag pair can be enclosed within another tag pair, in which case the text between the tag is display with the effects of all tag pairs which surround it. More information about tags and their use is provided at this site.

As we will discuss later, there are even a few tags which the browsers will recognize that do not come in pairs, such as , which tells the browser to drop to the next line. No second, closing tag is required. There are also a few tags which have end tags whose use is optional because the browser is able to figure out where the effects of the tag should end. All of these are covered at this site.

Return to top of document

Browsers

While there are a few dozen web browsers available for you to use, the vast majority of all web traffic goes through just four browsers

Microsoft Internet Explorer
IE has the lion's share of the market. It is free from Microsoft. It comes with some controversy in that it does not provide 100% support of JavaScript nor does it come with Java (it's a separate download). Security issues continue to plague its reputation.
Netscape Communicator
Once the leader, Communicator now has only a single-digit market share.
Firefox
This is a revision to the first ever browser, Mozilla, now available for free along with the source code. It's a recent release that is getting a lot of positive exposure.
Opera
The only major browser that is not free, Opera started as a very small application (it fit on a single floppy disk) and continues to be a favorite alternative to IE. It offers a variety of features not found on other browsers. It reached some of its popularity by simply not being a browser from Microsoft - drawing on an underground of anti-Microsoft sentiment in its early days.

All three browsers are pretty consistent at translating HTML code into the same visual output, but there are some differences. The more complicated the web page, the more likely the browsers may exhibit some difference in the display of the web page. It's very common for web page designers to view their pages in all three browser before releasing the page to the web. They will avoid HTML code that does not display the same on all three browsers.