A new year, another set of New Year's resolutions: "Must get down to doing my own Web pages." If you have a reasonable grasp of how to use a Web browser, and you can type and save documents in a rudimentary text editor, it's not too difficult to write HTML and start building your own Web pages.
What is HTML?
It stands for HyperText Markup Language, the code which holds Web pages together. It has nothing to do with the inflationary price of imported magazines, and very little to do with high-level computer programming that takes days or weeks to learn.
In a nutshell (deep breath): HTML is the way you put information about a Web document (e.g. what text should be bold, what should be italics, where a paragraph should finish, or what other document to link to and its address) inside the document.
So how hard is it to learn?
Well, we know children under the age of 10 who can do it. Most people should be able to master the basic rudiments in an hour or two. See below for a quick dive into making a very rudimentary page.
What does HTML consist of?
HTML is ordinary text (such as the phrase "This is my home page"), and "tags", which are sort of commands or switches. The tags convey information about the document - telling it to turn particular words into bold type, for instance, then telling it where to switch off the bold type. Or whether to centre the text, or what graphic needs to be incorporated at a particular point in a document.
You'll soon spot HTML tags because they are always between a left angle bracket (a ""). Like Morecambe & Wise (or Whittaker & Lemass, or Liam & Noel), HTML tags usually come in pairs. For example the tag or (either will do - tags are not case sensitive) is for turning any text which follows it into bold.
Equally importantly, turns off the tag. This ending tag looks exactly like the starting tag
is the tag for turning the text that follows it into red and bringing it up one size; and
makes the text turn blue and go two sizes smaller. Don't forget to use the tag to turn things off, and remember you have to spell "colour" the American way. . .
What do I need to write HTML?
At first, just a text editor and a Web browser. (a) A plain ordinary text editor will do, such as Notepad (on the PC) or SimpleText or BBEdit (on a Mac) or Ed (on an Amiga). Use any word processor, as long as it has an option to save files as pure text (also called "raw text" or "text only" or ASCII). (b) While HTML is the "source document", you'll also need to see how it looks as a finished Web page. For this, you'll have to load it into a Web browser. When you're just starting off, any fairly recent version of a leading browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer will do. Eventually you'll need a few other bits of software such as a graphics editor to create and/or alter images, but we'll come to them in later sessions. And you will probably need FTP software too - FTP (File Transfer Protocol) makes it a doddle to transfer your finished Web pages to the Web server - the computer that will eventually hold them.
Do Web pages have to be stored on Web servers?
Not necessarily. It depends - you don't have to have a connection to the Internet or the Web to write and view your HTML documents:
Web pages can exist on a "standalone" machine - a PC or Mac which isn't connected to any networks at all. For example, most Webmasters will write and test their pages locally first. Or you might want to create a standalone multimedia exhibit, using just a PC and HTML;
or you can hold Web pages on a machine in a local area network - an internal network in your business or school, for example;
or you could have an ordinary domestic account with an Internet service provider such as Ireland OnLine which will give you about five megabytes of Web space (which equals quite a lot of Web pages) as part of your basic account;
or you could ask someone to put your pages on their server (such as your company, college or other organisation);
or you can sign up for totally free Web space, in places such as Geocities or Tripod. Next week we'll explain how to open one of these accounts and put up your Web pages;
or, if you can afford to, you could set up your own server with a leased line to the Internet - this is generally an option for larger bodies.
A friend told me you don't have to learn HTML because it's too fiddly, and you are better off simply using Web design software such as Pagemill. . .
Sure. Nowadays you don't have to know HTML to create Web pages. For example, later versions of Microsoft Word let you edit a document, then convert it to HTML when you save it, by choosing the "Save as HTML" option. There are also many specialised HTML editing packages which use a full WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") interface. In other words, they show you the effects of the tags rather than the tags themselves. But we recommend you dirty your hands. It's worth knowing the general principles of how HTML works. You can also keep up with new HTML commands as they are introduced without having to join that horrible "update race" to get the latest version of a piece of HTML editing software. Knowing HTML also means you can do many special effects which aren't possible on many of these alternatives.
Above all, you can start to learn how other people's HTML works. When you come across a well-designed page, go to your Web browser's menu bar and select the option to "View Source" - it shows the "raw" HTML which lies behind the page. Once you have a reasonable idea of how to read HTML, you can pinpoint the specific parts of the HTML document and the tags used to create the effect. . .