Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

HTML is a fairly simple language for defining on-line documents and the links between them. It is not difficult to create an HTML document using a simple text editor, but it is wiser to either copy existing HTML and modify it, or utilize a tool to assist you with HTML syntax. HTML examples are readily available and can be viewed or saved locally using the "View Source" option of any browser.

There are many tools on the market which aid one in developing web pages. In addition, most word processors like Word allow one to convert documents into html format and make the web page definition process almost completely trivial. With the proper tools, the implementor of a web page doesn't need to know HTML at all.

Given that one doesn't need to know HTML at all, it is still beneficial to learn and understand some simple HTML. HTML commands are called tags and they can be inserted throughout the text body. Tags are case-insensitive and are enclosed between angle bracket ("<" and ">") delimiters. Commands that surround and operate on blocks of text define the end of their scope in the format: </tag-symbol>. As an example, one would enter: <b>text</b> to show the word "text" in bold. Below is a simple HTML document which demonstrates the format of such documents followed by a facsimile of how it would actually appear when display and a narrative describing each of the key commands contained within it.

<html>
<body>
<head>
<title>Sample HTML Document</title>
</head>
<H1>Sample HTML Document</H1>
<p>This <A HREF="http://www.mjb.org/internet/html.html">document</A> refers to itself. Put on a happy face and start coding some HTML.
<ANAME="Anchor">Anchors</A> can be defined in text to demarcate sections which can be referenced later. The anchor is accessible via a reference of the form: <A HREF="#Anchor">beginning of local linklt;/A>
</body>
</html>

Sample HTML Document

Sample HTML Document

This document refers to itself. Put on a happy face and start coding some HTML. Anchors can be defined in text to demarcate sections which can be referenced later. The anchor is accessible via a reference of the form: beginning of local link

In general, all HTML documents begin with <html> and end with </html>. An optional header field beginning with <head> and ending with </head> may also be added prior to the body of the HTML document. Within the document header, one can specify a title which will appear when the document is displayed by a browser. The actual HTML text body begins with <body> and ends with </body> and consists of mostly text and HTML commmands. Paragraph/page headings are enclosed between <H#> tags,where # is from 1 to 6. The text between the starting <H#>tag and the ending </H#> tag will be displayed as enlarged and bold. The larger the number, the less the text is enlarged, thus <H1> is larger than <H2>. Text is entered free-form and will be automatically justified to the size of the region it is displayed in with all extra spaces removed. The <p> tag will define a new paragraph and thus skip a line prior to the text that follows it.

Within the text itself, one can define links to other web pages or within the same web page. The general form of a document link is: <A HREF="document location">text</A>,where "text" will show up as highlighted (bold and underlined by default) and the document found at "document location" will be displayed when the user clicks on the highlighted "text" (also known as a hyper-link). Locations within a document can be identified via an anchor and referenced directly. Note that in the example above, clicking on the "document" hyper-link will reposition this web page to the beginning. Clicking on the "beginning of local link" hyper-link will not appear to have any effect. Actually it repositions the browser to the line in the page beginning with "The anchor". However, since the document is so short one doesn't see the repositioning. In a larger document local links are much more relevant (eg. chapters in a book, etc).

Graphics can be inserted freely using the "IMG SRC"tag. Once again, the location of the image is identified with the tag and the file must be in GIF, XBM, JPEG, or PNG format. Using optional features like height and length, one can size the image. One can also specify alternative text to be utilized instead of the graphic to support browsers that are not capable of displaying graphics or whose image-loading option is turned off. Below are some interesting sites for graphics:

Index of Icon Sites
More Icons

For further information on HTML, click on one of the sites mentionedbelow:

National Center for Supercomputing Applications Home Page
Introduction to HTML

For having your web page thoroughly checked for syntax, broken links or spelling errors, a very useful tool is Doctor HTML.