Web authoring is nearly as common as word processing. The language of
web documents is HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). There are many who might
say that it is unnecessary to learn HTML given today's authoring tools.
(As a matter of fact, the first draft of this document is being written
using Adobe PageMill.) There is much truth to this statement. These
tools are inexpensive and easy to use. Examples are Adobe PageMill,
Netscape Navigator Gold, Netscape Composer. These programs
have the feel of graphical based word processing programs and protect
the user from the details of HTML tag, much the way that WordPerfect
for Windows or Macintosh protects the user from the codes that control
the formatting. The latest version of most word processors have an option
so that files can be saved in HTML format. (For MicrosoftWord you
may have to install the free Internet Assistant.)
These programs are great for preparing simple documents and for preparing
the first draft of more complex documents. However, for fine control of
the look of your page, it is often necessary to get into the HTML code.
Also, it is often easier to make small changes in your web pages by editing
the raw HTML in a text editor such as NotePad on Windows or SimpleText
on a Macintosh.
One of the best ways to learn HTML is it find web pages that you like and
then study the HTML source of those documents. Most browsers give you the
ability to view the HTML source of a web page. In Netscape Navigator
3.0.1 for Macintosh, for example, this is done by using the View,
Document Source command. The document in raw HTML is downloaded and
opened in SimpleText. From there you can save the file and edit it
as you please. (Remember, web documents and graphics are copyrighted, so
don't plagarize!)
This is not a comprehensive treatment of HTML. In fact, it is a very
biased introduction giving you the HTML features that I use most often.
There are many fine books on HTML as well as on-line resources. An introduction
to various on-line
resources for web authoring has been compiled and can be accessed through
the Help, How to Create Web Services in Netscape Navigator 3.0.1.
This tutorial will consist of eight parts:
In order to be seen by others on the web, documents must be placed on
a web server (instructions for doing this at CSU
). It is possible to view documents residing on your own hard drive using
your browser's File, Open File... command. A web server is often
a UNIX machine running server software dedicated to making web documents
available on the Internet. (At CSU this is yuma.colostate.edu aka www.colostate.edu
and in the Department of Chemistry it is franklin.chm.colostate.edu aka
www.chm.colostate.edu.) For these kinds of web servers you must worry about
uploading the documents that you have authored to the computer running the
web server. However MacOS 8 and the latest version of Windows 95 come with
personal web servers so that if you have a permanent Internet address
and leave your computer on all the time with the web server running, you
can serve documents from your PC or Mac. I anticipate that in the near future,
the web-server-on-every-desktop will be a common model.
When someone calls up a document on the web using a browser (or a web client)
such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer,
the browser interprets the HTML and displays the document according to the
HTML instructions. The end user normally does not see the HTML tags, but
simply sees the results of the tags' formatting instruction. For most browsers,
the way a particular tag is formatted can be set by the user of the browser.
Consequently, there is no to guarantee that the web document will look exactly
as the author intended.
An HTML tag is enclosed with less than (<) and greater than (>)
signs. Most often there is an opening tag <tag> and a closing tag
</tag> with everything in between being formatted according to that
tag. Notice that the closing tag has a forward slash. For example, the tag
for making bold text is B (tags are not case sensitive, but it is conventional
to write tags in capital letters).
Raw HTML written as:
Hydrogen is the most common <B>element</B> in the universe.
would appear in the browser as:
Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe.
Tagless text typically appears as Times 12 font.
Raw HTML written as:
<CENTER>Chapter One</CENTER>
would appear in the browser as:
Chapter One
A few tags: <P> for paragraph break, <BR> for line break, or
<HR> for horizontal rule do not require a closing tag.