Class 04: Lab: HTML

Held Friday, January 28, 2000

Overview

Today, we continue our discussions of hypertext by visiting a different set of intellectual foundations for hypertext. We then ground our understanding by visiting HTML, the first markup language for the World Wide Web.

Question potentially relevant to today's class: Do you prefer logical or physical markup? Why?

Question relevant to the next class: What does the use of HTML as the language of the World Wide Web say about the Web's accessiblity?

Notes

• We may be welcoming a new student to 105 today, Jeb Curtin. Jeb will make it five "J" students in 105: Jae, Jeana, Jeb, Jeff, and Joel.
  • If we add Ivy, Kevin, and Liz, we seem fairly concentrated at the middle of the alphabet.
• Monday at noon in Science 2413, the Computer Science Bag Lunch Film festival will resume with ``The Future of Computing: Seizing the Future We Want''. You may find it interesting to attend. This film in particular, and many of the films in the series, are appropriate for students in this class.
• Appropos our discussion of logical vs. physical markup, the World Wide Web Consortium just released a new standard, XHTML, which emphasizes logical markup. I'm going to try to find a way to incorporate it early next week.
  • I consider it appropriate to spend this extra time on hypertext, since many people currently equate ``computers'' and ``the World Wide Web''
• Be prepared for the syllabus to change in the next few days; since we've dropped the exams, I'm rethinking particular issues.
  • Read the Maso and Bush pieces for Monday (instead of the Dewdney reading I had previously assigned)
• Sarah works in the MathLAN on Mondays from 5-6 and on Wednesdays from 8-10.

Contents

• Literary Foundations of Hypertext
• HTML
  • Balanced Tags
  • Unbalanced Tags
  • Tag Parameters
  • A Sample Document
• Laboratory

Summary

• Intellectual foundations of hypertext, revisited
• Introduction to HTML
• Laboratory: HTML
• Handouts:
  • Carole Maso, ``Rupture, Verge, and Precipice; Precipice, Verge, and Hurt Not''
  • Vannevar Bush, ``As We May Think''
  • Your answers to question 4 (electronic only)

Literary Foundations of Hypertext

• In the previous class, we discussed technological foundations of hypertext.
• But a different intellectual thread grounds modern hypertext, a thread that comes not from computer science or engineering, but from literary theory.
• Some claim that modern hypertext (or at least modern hypertext theory) is due as much to Barthes and Derrida as to Bush and Nelson.
• One of the more interesting pre-Web hypertext systems (and yes, it remains interesting), is StorySpace, which was developed by a classicist (Jay David Bolter) and a writer (whose name I forget).
• The primary emphasis in this thread is one of empowering the reader or freeing the reader and writer from the tyranny of the line.

HTML

• HTML is a simple markup language created for the World-Wide Web.
• HTML is intended to be human readable.
  • Some would dispute that claim.
• HTML is a particular form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language
  • SGML was designed by a number of scholars for representing electronic manuscripts.
  • Full SGML can even describe layout of pages so that one can precisely represent documents like the Talmud.
• In HTML, parts of the document are surrounded by tags.
  • Tags give information about those parts of the document.
  • Each tag begins with a less-than sign and ends with a greater-than sign.
  • End tags have a slash after the less-than sign.

Balanced Tags

• You begin a paragraph with <P> and end a paragraph with </P>.
• You begin an important word or phrase with <EM> and end it with </EM>.
• You begin a list of items with <UL> and end it with </UL>.
• You begin an item in that list with <LI> and end it with </LI>.
• You begin a numbered list with <OL> and end it with </OL>.
• You begin a piece of text in a ``typewriter font'' with

Unbalanced Tags

• Some tags do not require end tags. Some even disallow end tags. For example,
• <BR> is a line break. Since there's not text that you're marking, it needs no end tag.
• <HR> is a horizontal rule.
• The <LI> tag does not need an end tag (since the next <LI> or the ending <UL> obviously ends it).

Tag Parameters

• Some tags permit you to enter parameters: more information about how the text should be displayed. For example, you can write
• <P align="right"> for right-justified text
• <HR width="75%"> for a less-wide rule
• <FONT face="Helvetica" color="Red"> for red, Helvetica text.

A Sample Document

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN"
          "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>A Web Page for XXX</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>A Web Page for XXX</H1>

<UL>
<LI>Attends: <em>Grinnell College</em>
<LI>Exepcts to graduate: <em>XXX</em>
</UL>

<P>
Write something here.
</P>

<P>
By <em>Your Name Here</em>.
</p>

</BODY>
</HTML>

Laboratory

• My experience is that you learn more about HTML by doing HTML rather than just writing about it. Hence, we'll spend most of today's class on a laboratory.
• We will reflect on this laboratory in Monday's class.