Abstract: This document provides a short introduction to HTML and the many ways of creating HTML.
HTML, the HyperText Markup Language, is a system for annotating textual documents to allow them to serve as a hypertext documents. HTML allows you to add tags to indicate the role or appearance of text. For example, you might indicate that a piece of text is the title of the document, or that that text should be emphasized.
Unlike many markup languages, HTML is relatively small and fairly easy to learn. Most people can master the basics of HTML in under an hour. Learning more advanced techniques can take much longer.
There are a number of ways to create HTML documents. Originally, most HTML documents were created with standard text editors (or word processors in "text only" mode). Authors wrote their text and then inserted appropriate tags. They then checked the appearance of a document by loading it nto a viewer.
Since there was (and still is) a large repository of documents formatted with other systems (e.g., Microsoft Word, LaTex), a number of utilities were developed to help translate documents from one format to another. Unfortunately, many of these translators emphasized the appearance of the document, rather than the underlying structure.
As more people started creating HTML documents, some wanted to see what their document would look like as they were creating it (rather than writing it and then loading it into a viewer). This led to the development of so-called WYSIWYG page authoring tools, like Adobe PageMill and Microsoft FrontPage. Creating HTML in these documents is much like authoring a document in a word processor
There are also a variety of intermediate tools available. For example, there are add-ons for many text editors that automatically insert the correct tags when you select a particular menu option. Many find this an appropriate balance. There are also some utilities that fill in some, but not all, of the HTML in a document. I've used this type of tool in building this site.
I'd recommend that, no matter what authoring strategy you eventually select, you begin by writing "raw html" so that you can get a sense of what is possible and a better understanding of the underlying structure.
Almost all markup in HTML is done with tags, small pieces of text that indicate the role of a piece of text. Some tags come in pairs, and surround that piece of text. One tag marks the begining of that piece of text, and another marks the end. Some tags can appear by themselves. Often, these indicate an object that should be inserted, rather than text to be annotated.
In HTML, most tags have three parts
For example, the tag <TITLE> begins the title of a document.
Tags that mark the end of a piece of text are called "end tags", and have the structure
For example, the tag </TITLE> marks the end of the title of a document.
Putting it together, we'd use
<TITLE>...</TITLE>
to indicate the title of a document.
We'll discuss the individual tags as we begin to write HTML documents.
This page written by Samuel A. Rebelsky.
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