HTML intro

HyperText Markup Language (or HTML) is the 'language' that browsers interpret to display web pages. It is also what we use to write web pages. There is nothing difficult or particularly flash about HTML, they are just letters that you include in the text files that you place onto a web server (any computer that is connected to the Internet and running a web server).

To write web pages you simply put together your content, with the appropriate 'tags' (this is what the letters mentioned above are called). A tag consists of an angle bracket < a particular letter or group of letters, and a closing angle bracket >.

You can use any word processor to write web pages, since all they are plain text files, but there are also specific programs that make writing web pages much easier.

These files are then placed onto a web server and they are then available via the web. That is all that is needed, and all that is really done.

So to write a web page you need to know a bit of HTML, access to a web server to publish the work, and if you want to read it, access to a browser to then read it.

(You can write web pages and view them on any computer, on the net or not. This is actually the usual way in which most people write web pages and web sites. But they are only only the net - and so readable by anyone else with net access - once they're on a web server.)

HTML is an international standard, though recently this has been compromised by various proprietary arguments, and is relatively 'dumb'.

However, the web has been made much more sophisticated by the use of various 'add ons'. These consist, at the moment, of two major things:

Java
CGI's

Java is a platform neutral programming language that is inserted into your web pages. The browser interprets this program and does what it is told to do (they are just words and characters). These things might be about graphics, a counter, displaying varying content, and lots of other tricks. (We won't be learning Java.)

The Common Gateway Interface is a way for a program to (called a CGI) work in conjunction with a web server. CGI's are used to 'value add' HTML. For example a CGI would be used to let a web page talk to a database, or to place a counter on a web page, or to process a web based form. The CGI has to be running in association with the web server, so this can only be done if there are CGI's running on the web server you use, you are allowed to use them, and you know how to write 'for' them. You will use some CGI's.

While HTML is the basis for writing on the Web, it is a limited hypertext model from the point of view of writing, and linking.

http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au