HTML

HTML – What is it? And do I really need to know about it?

Most web pages are written in a code called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). It tells the search engines what your web page is about, and it explains to your browser what the page should do.

Let’s say you’ve painted a painting and you want to sell it to lots of people as a puzzle. But the puzzle cutting machine you have only cuts the pieces into squares, all one inch by one inch. So how can you be sure that the people who buy the puzzle will put the squares in the correct sequence so they will all see your painting as you intended?

Well, you could write directions on the back of the puzzle pieces (“This is piece #1. It goes in the upper left hand corner, to the left of piece #2, and directly over piece #37. This puzzle is a landscape by Hans.”). Now it should be very clear where each piece of the puzzle goes, what the puzzle is about, and who created it. That's basically what HTML is: the writing on the back of the puzzle pieces.

When your site is posted on the internet, some people are going to use a browser called Internet Explorer to view it, some will use Netscape, Safari, Opera, etc. The HTML code tells the different browsers where each piece of your website goes, and what each piece is supposed to do. If clicking on the “Enter” button is supposed to take you to the Homepage, the HTML code tells the browser to do that. That’'s how i’'s supposed to work anyway…

Unfortunately, different browsers read some kinds of directions somewhat differently. Sometimes you may visit a site and certain buttons don’t work like they should, or some images over-lap, or some text runs into other text… aauugh! It’s either a mistake on the web designer’s part, or a web designer’s worst nightmare… BROWSER INCOMPATABILITY!!! Designing a site that every browser will view the same way is nearly impossible, but there is an organization called the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that is trying to help the hapless web designer and viewer. Directed by Tim Berners-Lee, the Web’s inventor, the W3C is trying to convince the Web community to come together and agree on some universal standards (www.webstandards.org).

Can’t we all just get along?

While most people (myself included) use these wonderful software programs that write the HTML for you, it’s really good to know some HTML so if the program you are using doesn’t have a feature you need, you can write the code in yourself. My favorite book on HTML is “HTML for the World Wide Web” by Elizabeth Castro, one of the Visual Quickstart Guides from Peachpit Press.

It’s important to at least know how to get to the HTML of your page so you can insert or check your Meta Tags!

To view the HTML behind this page, go up to the very top of your screen to your browser’s toolbar and click on VIEW then choose PAGE SOURCE (for Netscape) or SOURCE (for Explorer).

Here is a sample of some HTML:

Looks like Greek, huh? Very simply, it’s telling the browser that when the viewer moves their mouse over the “Your Domain Name” button you see on the left, it should replace the plain “Your Domain Name” button with the “Your Domain Name” button with the blue splash behind it. It’s also saying that the button is 146 pixels wide and 20 pixels high, and that when it’s clicked on it should open the page “domain.html,” and open it in the “basics body” frame which is on the right side of my web page.

I know it looks confusing and extremely difficult, but really, I didn’t type in a single line of that code - my software program Dreamweaver® did it all for me. But if that “HTML” button did NOT change to the blue splash for some reason, I would know just where to look to find out where I went wrong and how to fix it.

There are plenty of brilliant programmers who can create an entire site just by typing in HTML, DHTML (Dynamic HTML), and scripts like Javascript, but I have too many other things I’d like to do with my time.