HTML - The backbone of the internet

Last updated: 2006-12-09 00:00:00

If you are interested in programming for the internet, this is one language you will not be able to ignore. However, most people pick up the basics of HTML pretty quickly, and you can start doing useful things almost right away.

What the heck IS Html, anyway???

Html stands for Hyper-text Markup Language. So what does that mean? A "Mark-up" language is a system of markings that are used in a document to indicate how to display or handle the different parts of the docutment. For example, you might want to indicate what words are the heading so it can be displayed in large, bold text while you would want to mark paragraphs so they will be displayed in smaller, lighter type. "Hyper-text" refers to the ability to insert links into the text displayed in the browser to allow the viewer to move to other places in the article you are reading, or to other pages at the same web-site, or even to entirely different web sites. This, of course, is what the internet is all about.

How does this work?

Html isn't really a language, as such. The marked up document is delivered to the browser when a user clicks on a link. Don't worry too much about the details of this, but essentially the browser is an application that knows how to understand the mark-up in an Html document and uses that mark-up to display the page that the user requested with all the fonts, colors, images, lines, buttons and etc. that the web designer put into the mark-up. You have probably guessed, but the mark-up itself isn't displayed: Only the words and pictures and other things that make up the interesting part of the document are displayed.

How do I get started?

One of the cool things about HTML is that you can easily write simple web pages in a text editor (like Microsoft Notepad), save them to your harddrive with the .htm or .html extension, and then just double click on them to see what they look like in your default browser. In other words, you have all the tools you need to start learning Html right at your finger tips, literally! There are countless sites on the internet that have tutorials, samples, references, and event complete courses for free. It is such a fundamental part of the Web that every page you navigate to can be a learning experience by just viewing the source using the browser.

I'll be adding plenty here, when I get the chance.