Teaching and Publishing in the World Wide Web
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The plethora of multi-hundred page books designed to teach authors to build Web pages using the HTML markup language surely is intimidating to the beginner. However, the beginner should understand at the outset that it is not at all necessary to learn HTML in order to be a Web author or publisher. I have not edited an HTML tag in almost a year, yet I continue to create and manage several Webs. I also teach others to create Web pages without learning HTML. To emphasize that there is no need to learn HTML, I founded the organization HTML Just Say No. However, it is helpful for an author to have some understanding of the nature of the computer files that are displayed as Web pages.
WWW servers use HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) to serve hypertext documents that are requested by a browser. Hypertext documents are plain text files (ASCII files) in which the content is augmented by descriptive tags using the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML tags describe the logical structure of the document. In addition, tags can provide linking information that enables the browser either to jump to other portions of the current document or to request other documents from the same or other HTTP servers. Links can also be used by the browser to connect to other types of servers such as Gopher servers or FTP servers.
HTML is a variation of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is an ISO standard for describing the logical structure of a document. Specifically, HTML is a Data Type Definition (DTD) within the SGML standard. For the most part, HTML markup does not control how a document will be formatted for the ultimate reader of the document. Formatting is applied to the document by the Web browser at the time the document is displayed. It is the browser that determines the final appearance of the various logical parts of the document. How a particular browser chooses to format a particular logical element of a document may or may not be under the control of the user of the browser.
The most common logical element in a document is the paragraph. Other logical elements include: 1.) headings of various levels to separate the document into sections, 2.) lists of various types such as numbered and un-numbered lists, and 3.) items in those lists. In addition to such commonly understood text elements, hypertext documents contain anchor elements that use the syntax of Uniform Resource Locators (URL) to define links to other documents and files.
Providing a tutorial on HTML is far beyond the scope of this paper. For most purposes, most authors do not even need to know HTML. As an author you certainly do not need to know the codes your word processor inserts into a document file on your PC in order to achieve a particular effect on your printer. Your word processor software is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) application that shows you output results, not input controls.
In fact, marking up a document with HTML tags is exactly the task that once was called word processing. Many of us who predate desktop computers learned to word process on IBM mainframes using IBM's GML markup in conjunction with the Script text formatter. Later there was even a well-reviewed PC text formatter named ReadiWriter that could read GML files and format text on the early Epson dot matrix printers. Creating printed output was a tedious task that involved inserting dozens of different GML tags and Script "dot" commands into the flow of text. Fortunately, PC word processors recognized that inserting structure and formatting tags was best left to software. Authors could then concentrate on content and design.
Today, editing HTML tags with a text editor must be viewed as a giant step backwards. Inserting tags can be left to the software of a WYSIWYG Web page editor. You as an author can concentrate on content, and on design fundamentals. Most modern word processors will save files in HTML format, and specialized Web page editors like Microsoft FrontPage enable you to create Web pages and manage entire Web sites in a totally graphical environment.
A final argument for the use of WYSIWYG Web page editors is the sheer complexity of the HTML markup needed to produce even simple effects. As an example, point your Web browser at my Windows 95/98 links page. Then view the source file that produces the display. You will be hard pressed to find the textual content of the page within the complex HTML markup that involves tables nested within cells of other tables. Yet I constructed that relatively simple Web page without ever looking at an HTML tag.
For the sake of completeness, an example of HTML markup is illustrated below. This example consists of a paragraph of text containing an ordered (numbered) list nested within an unordered (unnumbered) list.
The raw HTML text might appear as follows:
<h1>Heading Level 1</h1> <p> This is the beginning of the paragraph. <ul> <li>First list item <li>Second list item <ol> <li>First list item in the ordered list <li>Second item in the ordered list </ol> <li>Third and last list item in the unordered list </ul> This is the remainder of the paragraph.
When viewed with your Web browser, this marked up fragment is displayed as:
This is the beginning of the paragraph.
This is the remainder of the paragraph.
Notice that blank lines, extra spaces and line ends are ignored by the Web browser when it flows the text according to the HTML markup. Some browsers may double-space between list items in either or both of the ordered and unordered lists.
Continue to HTML Documentation
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Revised: December 28, 1999
Harry_M_Kriz , [hmkriz@vt.edu]