A
s you surely know by now, World Wide Web pages are prepared using a Markup
Language. That is, a "language" that uses "tags" to clue
the browser on how to present data.
So what about this HyperText Markup Language? Markup languages have been around
for a while. As a young engineer (believe me, that was a long time ago), marking
text files so they would print out correctly was one of my tasks. In fact, a
variety of markup languages are alive and well in the Unix environment today.
HTML, at least in its present form, is fairly young. The whole graphical browser
phenomenon wasn't born until 1992 and not wide spread until 1994. It of course
exploded in 1996. I expect future desktop operating systems to meld into a Web like
environment. Without a doubt, HTML is here to stay.
C
reating Web (i.e., HTML) documents is both easy and hard. It's easy in the sense
that the basic HTML tags are well-documented awaiting your pleasure. It's hard in
the sense that there are thousands of permutations of these tags, not well-
documented and ever changing, to trap the uninitiated.
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You did notice the Newspaper column style of this Web Page. An exercise for students: How did he do that? A brief, but competent explanation directly to me via e-mail. |
P
lease consider the pages included in this Mechanics of
Web Page Design section as beacons to light your way. Self-study is certainly
in order, using one or more of the recommended text. Let me mention one item
that is often a stumbling block, Unix. You need to know a bit of Unix to put a page
up on the Web. To pass this course, you need to publish a Web page. So please, STUDY UNIX!
At least at the level presented on this
Getting Your Feet Wet Page.
Use the table of contents in the frame to the left to navigate about this section. Yes, Frames are discussed. |