UNIT I

Internet History

1989 networking is started with ARPA net to provide three services: file transfer, remote printing
and telnet
1972, e-mail service is added to that
1973, TCP/IP was proposed as a standard
Regional network called SURAnet (Southern University Research Associations) was developed by
university of Maryland
Another network called CSNET was also developed by NSF(National Science Foundation)
Several protocols like FTP, SMTP were developed under ARPAnet
January 1 1982. TCP/IP became standard protocol for ARPAnet on that day Internet was said to be
born. That time, TCP/IP was used to connect computers within the LAN and later it permits
outside regional network to communicate with it.
Later, computers at several institution connected to it by phonenet(modem)
And later, leased telephone lines were used.
1985, NSFNET was developed by NSF that connects super computer center placed in different
locations
Regional networks line SURA net, JuNcNet, NYSERnet, SDSCnet were developed with the
capability of data transmission at 56kb/s
Later, data transmission updated to 1.5mb/s
1990, ARPAnet decommissioned and NSF became the center of internet
1990, internet was used for commercial purpose with dial up access
1995, internet services offered by Internet Service Providers(ISP)

Internet Protocols
Protocol means a detailed specification of how communication between computers will be carried out in
order to serve specific purpose.
TCP/IP
There are two protocols: Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol.
TCP works on IP protocol. It offers services such as e-mail, web browsing, and file download, accessing
remote data bases etc., It is a higher-level Protocol more reliable and connection oriented. Before
transmitting any msg. a connection between s->d will be established using a three way handshake
method. At the end of the transmission, the same connection will be detached using the three way
handshaking method. TCP/IP is analogous to telephone service.
Analogies:

IP ~ the telephone network

TCP ~ calling someone who answers, having a conversation, and hanging up
UDP ~ calling someone and leaving a message
DNS ~ directory assistance

Internet Protocol (IP)

IP is the fundamental protocol defining the Internet (as the name implies!)
IP address:
is a 32-bit number (in IPv4)
Associated with at most one device at a time (although device may have more than one)
Written as four dot-separated bytes, e.g. 192.0.34.166

IP function: is to transfer data from source device to destination device

IP source software creates a packet representing the data. The packet has two parts
Header: contains source and destination IP addresses, length of data, etc.
Data: contains actual message
If destination device is on another LAN, packet is sent to a gateway that connects to more than
one network as shown in following fig.

When application on source wants tom transmit msg. it calls the IP s/w on the source machine and
provides its data to it. The ip s/w then creates a packet. After constructing the packet, it will be sent to
the destination via the network. If the destination is on another n/w, ip will deliver the packet to the
gateway. Then the packet will be routed to the correct destination by the gateway. The IP s/s running on
the destination machine will receive the packet and pass it to an application waiting for the data in the
destination. IP also adds some error detection information called checksum to each packet so that if a
packet is corrupted can be detected by the destination.
TCP

Limitations of IP:
IP provides a no guarantee of packet delivery (packets can be dropped)
In which the communication is one-way (source to destination)
TCP adds concept of a connection on top of IP to overcome the draw backs of IP
It provides guarantee that packets delivered
It provides a two-way (full duplex) communication
The following fig. illustrated the communication using TCP

TCP also adds concept of a port

TCP header contains port number representing an application program on the destination
computer
Some port numbers have standard meanings
Example: port 25 is normally used for email transmitted using the Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
Other port numbers are available first-come-first served to any application

User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

Like TCP in that:

It builds on IP
It provides port concept
Unlike TCP in that:
There is no connection concept
There is no data transmission guarantee
Advantage of UDP vs. TCP:
Lightweight, so faster for one-time messages

DNS

DNS is the phone book for the Internet

It maps between host names and IP addresses
DNS often uses UDP for communication
Host names are in human understandable form. Easier to remember rather than representing it in
numeric form.
e.g., www.example.org where labels separated by dots
Final label is top-level domain. The domains are classified into:
Generic domain: .com, .org, etc.
Country-code domain: .us, .il, etc.
Domains are divided into second-level domains, which can be further divided into subdomains,
etc.
E.g., in www.example.com, example is a second-level domain
A host name plus domain name information is called the fully qualified domain name of the
computer
Above, www is the host name, www.example.com is the FQDN

nslookup is a program that provides a command-line access to DNS A single host may have
multiple IP addresses.

World Wide Web

The Web is the collection of machines (Web servers) on the Internet that provide information,
particularly HTML documents, via HTTP.
Machines that access information on the Web are known as Web clients. A Web browser is
software used by an end user to access the Web.
Distinctive feature of Web: support for hypertext (text containing links)
It communicates via Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP)
It uses Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)for Document representation

HTTP

HTTP is based on the request-response communication model:

Client sends a request
Server sends a response
HTTP is a stateless protocol: where the protocol does not require the server to remember
anything about the client between requests.

Normally implemented over a TCP connection (80 is standard port number for HTTP)
The following is the typical browser-server interaction using HTTP:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

User enters Web address in browser

Browser uses DNS to locate IP address
Browser opens TCP connection to server
Browser sends HTTP request over connection
Server sends HTTP response to browser over connection
Browser displays body of response in the client area of the browser window

The information transmitted using HTTP that is reguest-response message is often entirely text as
shown below:

It uses URI to trace the requested resource from the web server.

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)

Syntax: scheme : scheme-depend-part
Example: In http://www.example.com/, the scheme is http
Request-URI is the portion of the requested URI that follows the host name (which is
supplied by the required Host header field)
Example / is Request-URI portion of http://www.example.com/

URIs are of two types:

Uniform Resource Name (URN)
Can be used to identify resources with unique names, such as books (which
have unique ISBNs)
Scheme is urn
Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
Specifies location at which a resource can be found
In addition to http, some other URL schemes are https, ftp, mailto, and file

HTTP Request
Each request message begins with a request line, which contains three critical pieces of information: A
start line (which contains the method the client is requesting; the URI of the resource upon which the
client wishes the action to be performed and the version of HTTP that the client is using). After the start
line come a set of message headers related to the request, followed by a blank line and then optionally,
the message body of the request as shown below

Structure of the request:

start line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body
Start line
Example: GET / HTTP/1.1
Three space-separated parts:
HTTP request method
Request-URI
HTTP version
Common request methods:
HEAD

GET
POST
PUT
DELETE
TRACE
OPTIONS

Used to ask only for information about a document, not

for the document itself. It's often used by clients who use
caching, to see if the document has changed since it was
last accessed.
Requests a representation of the specified resource.
Submits data to be processed to the identified resource.
Uploads a representation of the specified resource.
Deletes the specified resource.
Echoes back the received request, so that a client can
see what (if any) changes or additions have been made
by intermediate servers.
Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for
specified URL

Header field structure:

After the request line come any of the headers that the client wants to include in the message; it
is in these headers that details are provided to the server about the request. The headers all use
the same structure as
field name : field value

Syntax
Field name is not a case sensitive
Field value may continue on multiple lines by starting continuation lines with white
space
Field values may contain MIME types (Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions), quality values. MIME is a convention for specifying content type
of a message. In HTTP, typically used to specify content type of the body of
the response. MIME content type organized as
type / subtype where type and subtype define the Content-Type.
Some common content types:,

MIME Type
text/plain
text/html
image/gif
image/jpeg
application/oct
et-stream

Description
Plain text. Default if data is primarily
text and no other type detected.
HTML. Default if common tags
detected and server does not supply
image/* type.
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).
JPEG image.
Binary file. Default if data is primarily
binary.

Common header fields:

Field Name
Host
User- Accept
Connection:

Use
host name from URL (required)
type of browser sending request
value close tells server to close connection after single
request/response
Content-Type:
MIME
type
of
(POST)
body,
normally
application/x-www-formurl encoded
Content-Length:
bytes in body
Referer:
URL of document containing link that supplied
URI for this HTTP
request
Agent:
MIME types of acceptable documents

HTTP Response
After receiving and interpreting a request message, a server responds with an HTTP response message.

Structure of the response:

start line
header field(s)
blank line
optional body

Status line: The first line of a Response message is the Status-Line, consisting of the protocol
version followed by a numeric status code and its associated textual phrase.
Example: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
It has three space-separated parts:

Status

HTTP version
status code
reason phrase in text (intended for human use)
code: to display the status of the response message
is a three-digit number
Classified into five classes. First digit is class of the status code:

1xx:
Informational
2xx: Success

Request received, continuing process

3xx:
Redirection

The
action
was successfully
received,
understood, and accepted
Further action must be taken in order to
complete the request

4xx:
Error
5xx:
Error

The request contains bad syntax or cannot be

fulfilled
The server failed to fulfill an apparently valid
request

Client
Server

Some common status codes:

200: OK.
302: This code indicates that a page has been temporarily redirected to
another URL. This means that the page is still active, just temporarily
moved to another URL.

403: Some of you may have come across this, also known as the
Forbidden Request. Basically it means that you have made a legal
request, but the server is refusing to respond to it.
404: The most common of the Broken Site Errors! Basically this is where
the URL no longer exists or cannot be found, so you will be redirected to a
broken holding page.
500: Just a generic Server error message, this comes up when there is
nothing else to explain a problem.
501: This is where the Server you a requesting information from does not
understand the method in which you are requesting the information, or
there is not a fulfilled request.
502: Simply an invalid response was received by the server, from the
request that you have made.

Common header fields:

Accept-Ranges
Date

What partial content range types this server

supports
The date and time that the message was sent

Last-Modified

The last modified date for the requested object

Expires

Gives the date/time after which the response is

considered old
A hash code of the resource returned

ETag
Location
Server

Used in redirection, or when a new resource has

been created
A name for the server

Cache Control
It stores the copy of the loaded page for a specific amount of time (during which its considered
adequate) allowing user to use it instead of reloading this page from the server. Most of the web clients
(browsers) can cache received server responses and store the content on the users hard disk drive for
further reuse.
To provide efficient caching one should take into consideration two main principles: adequacy and
validation. Adequacy means that the cached objects must be up-to-date, i.e. the same as on the server.
Validation is an operation to check whether stored data still corresponds to that on the web server. If the
data is fresh, the local resource is used, otherwise the data needs to be reloaded from the server.

Cache

Cache

advantages
Reduces response time
Less network traffic
Less load on server
disadvantage
Cached copy of resource may be invalid (inconsistent with remote version)

Cache Validation can be used to check whether a cached response is still good after it becomes stale.
For example, if the response has a Last-Modified header, a cache can make a conditional request using
the If-Modified-Since header to see if it has changed. The ETag (entity tag) mechanism also allows for
both strong and weak validation.
Character Sets
Character sets are standards that map specific real world characters (code elements) to specific
numbers (code points) and then encode those code points as bytes (character encoding or encoding
schemes). EG: ANSI and Unicode. The physical file of a page is encoded in bytes according to a character
set. The HTML of a page can also specify which character set to use with a meta tag of this syntax in the
<head> tag of the page:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=CharacterSet">.
IANA maintains complete list of Internet-recognized character sets/encodings for web documents. USASCII character set can be also used for such documents, but is not recommended. UTF-8 and ISO-88591 are supersets of US-ASCII and provide international compatibility. UTF-8 can represent all ASCII
characters using a single byte each and arbitrary Unicode characters using up to 4 bytes each ISO-88591 is 1-byte code that has many characters common in Western European languages, such as
Web Clients
It typically refers to the Web browser in the user's machine. It is a software application for retrieving,
presenting, and traversing information resources on the web server. It is used to create a HTTP request
message and for processing the HTTP response message.
User agent: Any web client is designed to directly support user access to web servers is known as user
agent. Web browsers can run on desktop or laptop computers. Some of the browsers are: Internet
Explorer, Mozilla, FireFox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Netscape Navigator
Web Browsers:
Browsers are software programs that allow you to search and view the many different kinds of
information that's available on the World Wide Web. The information could be web sites, video or audio
information.
The following list explains the various parts that make up a web browser and an explanation of their
purpose.

Status Bar: You will find the status bar at the very bottom of your browser window. It basically tells you
what you are doing at the moment. Mainly, it shows you load speed and the URL address of whatever
your mouse is hovering over.

Title Bar: You will find this bar at the absolute top of your browser and in will be the colour blue for the
major browsers. The purpose of the Title bar is to display the title of the web page that you are currently
viewing.
Menu Bar: The menu bar contains a set of dropdown menus
Navigational tool: A bar contains standard push button controls that allow the user to return to a
previously viewed page, to reverse and refresh the page, to display the home page and to print the page
etc.
Toolbar Icons: You will find the Toolbar directly under the Title Bar. The Toolbar is where you will find the
back button, home button and the refresh button etc.
Client area: It is a display window which is the space in which you view the website.
Scroll Bars: The Scroll bars, usually located to the right of the Display Window, allows you to "scroll"
(move down or up the web page) so you can view information that is below or above what is currently in
the Display Window.
- First graphical browser running on general-purpose platforms: Mosaic (1993)

Primary tasks:
Convert web addresses (URLs) to HTTP requests
Use DNS to map the web site address into its appropriate IP addresas
Render (appropriately display) documents returned by a server
Establish a TCP connection using IP address
Additional functionality:

Execution of scripts (e.g., drop-down menus)

Event handling (e.g., mouse clicks)
GUI for controls (e.g., buttons)
Secure communication with servers
Display of non-HTML documents (e.g., PDF) via plug-ins

Standard features
Save web page to disk
Find string in page
Fill forms automatically (passwords, CC numbers, )
Set preferences (language, character set, cache and HTTP parameters)
Modify display style (e.g., increase font sizes)
Display raw HTML and HTTP header info (e.g., Last-Modified)
Choose browser themes (skins)
View history of web addresses visited
Bookmark favorite pages for easy return

HTTP URLs

Browser uses authority to connect via TCP

Request-URI included in start line (/ used for path if none supplied)

Fragment identifier not sent to server (used to scroll browser client area)

Web Servers

Basic functionality:
It receives HTTP request via TCP
It maps Host header to specific virtual host (one of many host names sharing an IP
address)
It maps Request-URI to specific resource associated with the virtual host
File: Return file in HTTP response
Program: Run program and return output in HTTP response
It maps type of resource to appropriate MIME type and use to set Content-Type header in
HTTP response
It Logs information about the request and response

Secure Servers
Since HTTP messages typically travel over a public network, to carry private information
(such as credit card numbers) it should be encrypted to prevent eavesdropping
The protocol https URL scheme tells the browser to use encryption. Some of the
other common encryption standards are
Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Tomcat:
A Java-based web server
It provides container called as Catalina for running Java servlets (HTML-generating
programs) as back-end to Apache or IIS
It can be used as a stand-alone using Coyote package. Some Coyote communication
parameters are:
Allowed/blocked IP addresses
Max. simultaneous active TCP connections
Max. queued TCP connection requests
Keep-alive time for inactive TCP connections
Some Catalina container parameters are:
Virtual host names and associated ports
Logging preferences
Mapping from Request-URIs to server resources
Password protection of resources
Use of server-side caching
These parameters can be modified to tune the server performance
Tomcat is a HTML-based server administration
It can be viewed by using the url http://localhost:8080.
localhost is a special host name that means this machine

The admintool utility is used to configure the behavior of the Tomcat Java Servlet/JSP container while it is
running. Changes made to Tomcat using admintool can be saved persistently so that the changes remain
when Tomcat is restarted, or can be saved for the current session only.
Running admintool

In the Web browser, point to the following URL:

browser window:

http://localhost:8080/admin, which displays in the Web

Perform Tomcat Web Server Administration tasks. After you have made changes to Tomcat, select the
Save button on that page to save the attributes for the current Tomcat process. Select the Commit
Changes button to write the changes to the <JWSDP_HOME>/conf/server.xml file so that the changes to
the Tomcat server are persistent and will be retrieved when Tomcat is restarted. To log out of admintool,
click Log Out button
Setting Server Properties

Select Tomcat Server in the left pane. The Server Properties display in the right pane. The Server
element represents the entire JSP/Servlet container. The server properties are shown in following table
Server Properties
Property

Description

Port
Number

The TCP/IP port number on which this server waits for a shutdown command. This connection
must be initiated from the same server computer that is running this instance of Tomcat. The
default value is 8005. Values less than 1024 will generate a warning, as special software
capabilities are required when using this port

Debug

The level of debugging detail logged by this server. Higher numbers generate more detailed

Level

output. If not specified, the default debugging detail level is zero (0).

Shutdow
n

The command string that must be received via a TCP/IP connection to the specified port
number in order to shut down Tomcat. The value for this property must contain at least 6
characters. The default value is SHUTDOWN.

Configuring Services
Service elements are nested with the Server element. The Service element represents the combination
of one or more Connector components that share a single engine component for processing incoming
requests.
For each Service element defined, you can create or delete the following elements:

Connector elements represent the interface between the Service and external clients that send
requests to it and receive responses from it.
Host elements represent a virtual host, which is an association of a network name for a server
(such as www.mycompany.com) with the particular server on which Tomcat is running.
Logger elements represent a destination for logging, debugging, and error messages for Tomcat.
Realm elements represent a database of user names, passwords, and roles assigned to those
users.
Valve elements represent a component that will be inserted into the request processing pipeline
for the associated container.

Connector Attributes
When you create or modify any type of Connector, the attributes shown in flowing table may be set, as
needed.
Common Connector Attributes
Attribute

Description

The maximum queue length for incoming connection requests when all possible request
Accept Count processing threads are in use. Any requests received when the queue is full will be
refused. The default value is 10.
Connection
Timeout

The number of milliseconds this Connector will wait, after accepting a connection, for the
request URI line to be presented. The default value is 60000 (i.e. 60 seconds).

IP Address

Specifies which address will be used for listening on the specified port, for servers with
more than one IP address. By default, this port will be used on all IP addresses associated
with the server.

Port Number

The TCP port number on which this Connector will create a server socket and await
incoming connections. Your operating system will allow only one server application to
listen to a particular port number on a particular IP address.

Minimum

The number of request processing threads that will be created when this Connector is first
started. This attribute should be set to a value smaller than that set for Maximum. The
default value is 5.

The maximum number of request processing threads to be created by this Connector,

which therefore determines the maximum number of simultaneous requests that can be
handled. If not specified, this attribute is set to 75.

Maximum

Configuring Host Elements

The Host element represents a virtual host, which is an association of a network name for a server (such
as www.mycompany.com) with the particular server on which Tomcat is running.
Host Attributes
The attributes shown in following table may be viewed, set, or modified for a Host.
Host Attributes
Attribute

Description

Name

The network name of this virtual host, as registered in your Domain Name Service server.
One of the Hosts nested within an Engine MUST have a name that matches the defaultHost
setting for that Engine.

Application
Base

The Application Base directory for this virtual host. This is the path name of a directory that
may contain Web applications to be deployed on this virtual host. You may specify an
absolute path name for this directory, or a path name that is relative to the directory under
which Tomcat is installed.

Debug
Level

The level of debugging detail logged by this Engine to the associated Logger. Higher
numbers generate more detailed output. If not specified, the default debugging detail level
is zero (0).

Configuring Logger Elements

A Logger element represents a destination for logging, debugging, and error messages for Tomcat.
Logger Attributes
Common attributes for all of the Logger types are outlined in the following table
Logger Attributes
Attribute

Description

Directory

The absolute or relative path name of a directory in which log files created by this logger will
be placed. If a relative path is specified, it is interpreted as relative to the directory in which
Tomcat is installed. If no directory attribute is specified, the default value is logs (relative to
the directory in which Tomcat is installed).

Prefix

The prefix added to the start of each log file's name. If not specified, the default value is
catalina. To specify no prefix, use a zero-length string.

Suffix

The suffix added to the end of each log file's name. If not specified, the default value is .log.
To specify no suffix, use a zero-length string.

Timestam Whether or not all logged messages are to be date and time stamped. Set to True to cause all
p
logged messages to be date and time stamped. Set to False to skip date/time stamping.
Tomcat writes the log information in a log file which in a plain text format. In general, the log entry has
the following format:
%h %l %t %r %s %b
%h - Remote host name
%l - Remote logical user name
%t - Date and time, in Common Log Format
%r - First line of the request URI
%s - HTTP status code of the response
%b - Bytes sent in body of response, excluding HTTP headers,
HTML introduction

HTML is a language for describing web pages. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is not a programming language, it is a markup language. A markup language is a set of markup
tags. HTML uses markup tags to describe web pages. HTML markup tags are usually called HTML tags.
HTML tags are keywords surrounded by angle brackets like <html>
HTML tags normally come in pairs like <b> and </b>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second
tag is the end tag. Start and end tags are also called opening tags and closing tags.
HTML documents describe web pages. HTML documents contain HTML tags and plain text
HTML documents are also called web pages. HTML tags are not case sensitive: <P> means the same as
<p>.
An HTML element starts with a start tag / opening tag. An HTML element ends with an end tag / closing
tag. The element content is everything between the start and the end tag. Some HTML elements have
empty content. Empty elements are closed in the start tag. Most HTML elements can have attributes.
HTML elements can be nested
Basic structure of HTML

HTML Element Tree

Document type declaration specifies name of root element: <!DOCTYPE html

Root of HTML document must be html. XHTML 1.0 requires that this element contain the xml namespace
xmlns attribute specification (name/value pair) as shown below.

The body element contains information displayed in the browser client area
The head element contains information used for other purposes by the browser:
title (shown in title bar of browser window)
scripts (client-side programs)
style (display) information

HTML History

1990: HTML invented by Tim Berners-Lee

1993: Mosaic browser adds support for images, sound, video to HTML
1994-~1997: Browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft, HTML defined operationally by
browser support
~1997-present: Increasingly, World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendations define HTML

HTML Versions

HTML 4.01 syntax defined using Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)
XHTML 1.0 syntax defined using Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Primary differences between HTML and XHTML:
HTML allows some tag omissions (e.g., end tags)
XHTML element and attribute names are lower case (HTML names are case-insensitive)
XHTML requires that attribute values be quoted

The following figure illustrates the relationship between the markup languages

For HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0, the document type declaration can be used to select one of three
flavors:
Strict: W3C ideal
Transitional: Includes deprecated elements and attributes (W3C recommends use of style
sheets instead)
Frameset: Supports frames (subwindows within the client area)

HTML Document Type Declarations

Strict:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
Frameset:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
Transitional:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
XHTML White Space

There

are four white space characters: carriage return, line feed, space, horizontal tab
All white space is converted to space characters
Leading and trailing spaces are trimmed
Multiple consecutive space characters are replaced by a single space character

For example,

The above code displays

The above code displays

Unrecognized HTML Elements

By executing the above HTML code, it shows the output as

Browsers ignore tags with unrecognized element names, attribute specifications

unrecognized attribute names. It is best to use an HTML validator to check syntax

with

HTML References
Since < marks the beginning of a tag, how do you include a < in an HTML document? For that use
markup known as a reference

Two types:
Character reference specifies a character by its Unicode code point
For <, use &#60; or &#x3C; or &#x3c;
Entity reference specifies a character by an HTML-defined name
For <, use &lt;

The following table lists the available references

Since < and & begin markup, within character data or attribute values these characters must
always be represented by references (normally &lt; and &amp;)
Good idea to represent > using reference (normally &gt;)
Reference provides consistency with treatment of <
It avoids accidental use of the reserved string ]]>
Non-breaking space ( &nbsp; ) produces space but counts as part of a word

Ex: keep&nbsp;together keep&nbsp;together which produces the following output

Non-breaking space often used to create multiple spaces. For example,

Empty Elements
HTML elements with no content are called empty elements. Empty elements can be closed in the start
tag. Example:
<br> is an empty element without a closing tag

XML allows two syntactic representations of empty elements

Empty tag syntax <br /> is recommended for browser compatibility
XML parsers also recognize syntax <br></br> (start tag followed immediately by end
tag), but many browsers do not understand this for empty elements

HTML Attributes
Attributes provide additional information about HTML elements. HTML elements can have attributes.
Attributes provide additional information about an element. Attributes are always specified in the start
tag. Attributes come in name/value pairs like: name="value"
Attribute Example
HTML links are defined with the <a> tag. The link address is specified in the href attribute:
Example
<a href="http://www.w3schools.com">This is a link</a>
Attribute values should always be enclosed in quotes. Double style quotes are the most common, but
single style quotes are also allowed. Attribute names and attribute values are case-insensitive. Below is
a list of some attributes that are standard for most HTML elements:

Attribute
class
id

Value
classname
id

Description
Specifies a classname for an element
Specifies a unique id for an element

style

style_definition

title

tooltip_text

Specifies an inline style for an element

Specifies extra information about an element (displayed as
a tool tip)

Common HTML Elements

HTML Headings
Headings are defined with the <h1> to <h6> tags.
<h1> defines the largest heading. <h6> defines the smallest heading.
Example
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<h2>This is a heading</h2>
<h3>This is a heading</h3>
Browsers automatically add an empty line before and after a heading. H1 headings should be used as
main headings, followed by H2 headings, then the less important H3 headings, and so on.
Use pre to retain format of text and display using monospace font

HTML Lines
The <hr
content:
Example
<p>This
<hr />
<p>This
<hr />
<p>This

/> tag creates a horizontal line in an HTML page. The hr element can be used to separate
is a paragraph</p>
is a paragraph</p>
is a paragraph</p>

HTML Comments
Comments can be inserted into the HTML code to make it more readable and understandable.
Comments are ignored by the browser and are not displayed. Comments are written like this:
Example
<!-- This is a comment -->
HTML Paragraphs
HTML documents are divided into paragraphs.
Example

<p>This is a paragraph</p>
<p>This is another paragraph</p>
HTML Line Breaks
Use the <br> or <br /> tag if you want a line break (a new line) without starting a new paragraph. The
<br /> element is an empty HTML element. It has no end tag. Even if <br> works in all browsers, writing
<br /> instead is more future proof.
Example
<p>This is<br />a para<br />graph with line breaks</p>
HTML Text Formatting Tags
Tag

Description

<b>

Defines bold text

<big>

Defines big text

<em>

Defines emphasized text

<i>

Defines italic text

<small>

Defines small text

<strong>

Defines strong text

<sub>

Defines subscripted text

<sup>

Defines superscripted text

<div> Element tag

Useful for dividing parts of the page into sections.
Creates a boxwith the following attributes:
margin
padding
border
height
width
<span> Element tag
Useful for applying style to text within another HTML element.
Use SPARINGLYunlike <h1> or <p>, <span> has no semantic meaning.
Remember, HTML is for content and HTML tags are for describing that content to non-human or
visually-impaired readers. <span> is just used to make things pretty.
Meta Tag

HTML interacts with the search engines through using meta tag

HTML Links
Links are found in nearly all Web pages. Links allow users to click their way from page to page.
A hyperlink (or link) is a word, group of words, or image that you can click on to jump to a new document
or a new section within the current document. When you move the cursor over a link in a Web page, the
arrow will turn into a little hand. Links are specified in HTML using the <a> tag.
The <a> tag can be used in two ways:
1.
To create a link to another document, by using the href attribute
2.
To create a bookmark inside a document, by using the name attribute
HTML Link Syntax
The HTML code for a link is simple. It looks like this: <a href="url">Link text</a>
The href attribute specifies the destination of a link.
Example
<a href="http://www.billabongschools.com/">Visit Billabong international schools</a>
which will display like this: Visit Billabong international schools Clicking on this hyperlink will send the
user to Billabong international schools ' homepage. The "Link text" doesn't have to be text. You can link
from an image or any other HTML element
HTML Links - The target attribute
The target attribute specifies where to open the linked document. The example below will open the
linked document in a new browser window:
Example
<a href=http://www.billabongschools/ target="_blank"> Visit Billabong international schools!</a>
HTML Links - The name attribute
The name attribute specifies the name of an anchor. The name attribute is used to create a bookmark
inside an HTML document. Bookmarks are not displayed in any special way. They are invisible to the
reader.
Example
A named anchor inside an HTML document:
<a name="tips">Useful Tips Section</a>
HTML Images
HTML The <img> Tag and the Src Attribute In HTML, images are defined with the <img> tag. The
<img> tag is empty, which means that it contains attributes only, and has no closing tag. To display an
image on a page, you need to use the src attribute. Src stands for "source". The value of the src attribute
is the URL of the image you want to display. Syntax for defining an image:
<img src="url" alt="some_text"/>
The URL points to the location where the image is stored. An image named "boat.gif", located in the
"images" directory on "www.ex3.com" has the URL: http://www.ex3.com/images/boat.gif.

The browser displays the image where the <img> tag occurs in the document. If you put an image tag
between two paragraphs, the browser shows the first paragraph, then the image, and then the second
paragraph.
HTML The Alt Attribute
The required alt attribute specifies an alternate text for an image, if the image cannot be displayed. The
value of the alt attribute is an author-defined text:
<img src="boat.gif" alt="Big Boat" />
The alt attribute provides alternative information for an image if a user for some reason cannot view it.
HTML Tables
Used to organize data into rows and columns. Tables are defined with the <table> tag. A table is divided
into rows (with the <tr> tag), and each row is divided into data cells (with the <td> tag). td stands for
"table data," and holds the content of a data cell. A <td> tag can contain text, links, images, lists, forms,
other tables, etc.

The HTML code for the construction of above table is shown below:
<table border = "1" width = "40%" align = left>
<caption><strong>Price of Fruit</strong></caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<!-- <tr> inserts a table row -->
<th>Fruit</th> <!-- insert a heading cell -->
<th>Price</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Apple</td> <!-- insert a data cell -->
<td>$0.25</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Orange</td>
<td>$0.50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Banana</td>
<td>$1.00</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Pineapple</td>
<td>$2.00</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<th>Total</th> <!the use of th here defines the content of header or footer cells

<th>$3.75</th>
</tr>
</tfoot>
</table>
Some more examples:
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td>row 2, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
The HTML code above looks in a browser:
row 1, cell row 1, cell
1
2
row 2, cell row 2, cell
1
2

HTML Table Headers

Header information in a table are defined with the <th> tag. The text in a th element will be bold and
centered.
<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Header 1</th>
<th>Header 2</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2, cell 1</td>
<td>row 2, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
The HTML code above looks in a browser:
Header 1

Header 2

row 1, cell row 1, cell

1
2
row 2, cell row 2, cell
1
2

HTML Tables and the Border Attribute

If you do not specify a border attribute, the table will be displayed without borders. Sometimes this can
be useful, but most of the time, we want the borders to show.
To display a table with borders, specify the border attribute:
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>Row 1, cell 1</td>
<td>Row 1, cell 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
Col span and Row span in Table
colspan and rowspan allow merging columns/rows
<colspan=number>
data cell spans more than one column
<rowspan=number>
data cell spans more than one row
Example:
<table border=1 width=60%>
<caption> Average Grades </caption>
<tr>
<th colspan=4> Report </th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> </th> <th> 2000 </th> <th> 2001 </th>
<th> 2002 </th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> Maths </td> <td> A </td> <td rowspan=2 valign=center> B </td><td>C</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> English </td> <td> C </td> <td> A </td>
</tr>
</table>
The HTML code above looks in a browser:

Cell Padding and Spacing

With the cellpadding and cellspacing attributes you will be able to adjust the white space on your tables.
Spacing defines the width of the border, while padding represents the distance between cell borders and
the content within. Color has been added to the table to emphasize these attributes.
HTML Code:
<table border="1" cellspacing="10"
bgcolor="rgb(0,255,0)">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
</tr>
<tr><td>Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>Row 1 Cell 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Row 2 Cell 1</td><td>Row 2 Cell 2</td></tr>
</table>
Cellspacing and Padding:
Column 1

Column 2

Row 1 Cell 1 Row 1 Cell 2

Row 2 Cell 1 Row 2 Cell 2
And now we will change the cellpadding of the table and remove the cellspacing from the previous
example.
HTML Code:
<table border="1" cellpadding="10"
bgcolor="rgb(0,255,0)">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
</tr>
<tr><td>Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>Row 1 Cell 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Row 2 Cell 1</td><td>Row 2 Cell 2</td></tr>
</table>
Cell Pads:
Column 1

Column 2

Row 1 Cell
1

Row 1 Cell
2

Row 2 Cell
1

Row 2 Cell
2

The value you specify for padding and spacing is interpreted by the browser as a pixel values. So a value
of 10 is simply 10 pixels wide. Most attributes that use numeric values for their measurements use
pixels.

HTML Table Tags

Tag
<table>
<th>
<tr>
<td>
<caption>
<colgroup>
<col />
<thead>
<tbody>
<tfoot>

Description
Defines a table
Defines a table header
Defines a table row
Defines a table cell
Defines a table caption
Defines a group of columns in a table, for formatting
Defines attribute values for one or more columns in a table
Groups the header content in a table
Groups the body content in a table
Groups the footer content in a table

Nesting Elements

If one element is nested within another element, then the content of the inner element is also
content of the outer element

XHTML requires that elements be properly nested. The following code is not a valid code

Most HTML elements are either block or inline

Block element: browser automatically generates line breaks before and after the element
content
Ex: p,div
Inline element: element content is added to the flow
Ex: span, tt, strong, a
Syntactic rules for nesting:
Children of body tags must be blocks
Blocks can contain inline elements
Inline elements cannot contain blocks

Absolute URL

The word absolute, in English, means "not dependent on anything else". It also means a complete and
free from doubt".
When you use an absolute URL, you point directly to a file. Hence, an absolute URL specifies the exact
location of a file/directory on the internet. It also follows that each absolute URL is unique, which means
that if two URLs are identical, they point to the same file.
The general syntax of absolute URLs is the following:
scheme:// host:port/path/filename
For example:
http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/images/email.gif specifies an image file email.gif located in the
images directory, under www.webdevelopersnotes.com domain name.
Similarly, the absolute URL of the document you are viewing is http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/
design/ relative_and_absolute_urls.php3 which is a page in the directory called design on this web site.
Relative URLs
A relative URL points to a file/directory in relation to the present file/directory.
It does not begin with a scheme part.
A situation: http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/images/email.gif
http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/ design/ relative_and_absolute_urls.php3
Look at the two URL above. We want to display the image file email.gif stored in the images directory of
www.webdevelopersnotes.com domain on this relative_and_absolute_urls.php3 page which is stored in
the design directory page of the same domain.
There are two ways to do this
Using an Absolute URL in an <img> tag
<img src="http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/images/email.gif"width="..." height="..." />
Using a Relative URL in an <IMG> tag
<img src="../images/email.gif" width="..." height="..." />
How it works?
Now to access email.gif file from relative_and_absolute_urls.php3 page using a relative URL we put
../images/email.gif in the SRC attribute. We, thus, instruct the browser to first go one level up (i.e. to the
document root) and then move to the images directory and pick up the file email.gif.
The two peroids (..) instruct the server to remove design/ relative_and_absolute_urls.php3 from the base
URL and then enters /images/email.gif and finally includes the image.
In general, a string that is consistent with the URL path syntax given earlier is known as relative URL. It
is a shorthand of absolute URL. The following table shows the different form of relative URL
Different form of
Relative URLs
d/e.html
../h/i.html
../f.html
/j.html
../../g.html
/k/l.html

If a relative URL begins with the slash /, it is interpreted as relative to the server root. If a relative URL
contains the special notation .., it means that one hierarchic part is removed from the URL which is
similar to cd.. command

Base URL
The base URL is by default the URL of the document itself
Conversion from Relative URL to absolute URL
-

a base URL is used for that

Assume a base URL of a document c.html is http://www.example.org/a/b/c.html. The following table

illustrates the conversion from relative to absolute url using base url.

Relative
URL
d/e.html
../f.html
../../g.html

Absolute URL
http://www.example.org/a/b/d/e.html
http://www.example.org/a/f.html
http://www.example.org/g.html

../h/i.html

http://www.example.org/a/h/i.html

/j.html

http://www.example.org/j.html

/k/l.html

http://www.example.org/k/l.html

Which URL type to use - Absolute or Relative?

A relative URL is preferred to use
It helps in web site maintenance
Also, it's easy to transfer a web site from one domain name to another. If you had used absolute URLs in
all links and SRC attributes, you'd have a difficult time updating each link on each page. With the use of
relative URLs you have no such problems.
Also, relative URLs would be shorter than absolute URLs and hence the file size of the web page would
reduce
Web forms

A form element is inserted into a web page by the <form> tag. The syntax:
<form method = value1 action = value2> </form>
Attributes:
method = post or get
Indicates the way the Web server will organize and send you the form output
post: causes changes to server data, e.g., update a database
get: does not cause any changes in server-side data, e.g., make a database request
action =

 Specifies the URL. When the user submits the form, the values entered in the form
should be sent to script that in the url

For example,

Form Controls

Elements (controls) inside a form are introduced by the <input> tag

<input type= name= value=>
type=element name name=variable name

value=value that sends to the server

Example:
<input type =text name= value = size=25 >

Text Fields
<input type="text" /> defines a one-line input field that a user can enter text into:
<form>
First name: <input type="text" name="firstname" /><br />
Last name: <input type="text" name="lastname" />
</form>
How the HTML code above looks in a browser:

First name:
Last name:
The default width of a text field is 20 characters.

Password Field
<input type="password" /> defines a password field:
<form>
Password: <input type="password" name="pwd" />
</form>
HTML code above looks in a browser:
Password:
The characters in a password field are masked shown as asterisks or circles
Radio Buttons
<input type="radio" /> defines a radio button. Radio buttons let a user select ONLY ONE one of a limited
number of choices:
<form>
<input type="radio" name="sex" value="male" /> Male<br />
<input type="radio" name="sex" value="female" /> Female
</form>
HTML code above looks in a browser:

Male
Female

Checkboxes
<input type="checkbox" /> defines a checkbox. Checkboxes let a user select ONE or MORE options of a
limited number of choices.

Submit Button
<input type="submit" /> defines a submit button.
A submit button is used to send form data to a server. The data is sent to the page specified in the
form's action attribute. The file defined in the action attribute usually does something with the received
input:
<form name="input" action="html_form_action.asp" method="get">
Username: <input type="text" name="user" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>
How the HTML code above looks in a browser:
Username:

Submit

If you type some characters in the text field above, and click the "Submit" button, the browser will send
your input to a page called "html_form_action.asp". The page will show you the received input
Form Controls: Label, hidden, text, submit button, reset button

Form control: Select

Form control: Text Area

For example,

Output will be:

From control: Menu

Output will be

HTML Form Tags

Tag

Description

<form>

Defines an HTML form for user input

<input />

Defines an input control

<textarea>

Defines a multi-line text input control

<label>

Defines a label for an input element

<fieldset>

Defines a border around elements in a form

<legend>

Defines a caption for a fieldset element

<select>

Defines a select list (drop-down list)

<optgroup>

Defines a group of related options in a select list

<option>

Defines an option in a select list

<button>

Defines a push button

HTML Frames

HTML frames allow authors to present documents in multiple views, which may be independent windows
or subwindows. Multiple views offer designers a way to keep certain information visible, while other
views are scrolled or replaced. For example, within the same window, one frame might display a static
banner, a second a navigation menu, and a third the main document that can be scrolled through or
replaced by navigating in the second frame.
Here is a simple frame document:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>A simple frameset document</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET cols="20%, 80%">
<FRAMESET rows="100, 200">
<FRAME src="contents_of_frame1.html">
<FRAME src="contents_of_frame2.gif">
</FRAMESET>
<FRAME src="contents_of_frame3.html">
<NOFRAMES>
<P>This frameset document contains:
<UL>
<LI><A href="contents_of_frame1.html">Some neat contents</A>
<LI><IMG src="contents_of_frame2.gif" alt="A neat image">
<LI><A href="contents_of_frame3.html">Some other neat contents</A>
</UL>
</NOFRAMES>
</FRAMESET>
</HTML>
that might create a frame layout something like this:

With frames, you can display more than one HTML document in the same browser window. Each HTML
document is called a frame, and each frame is independent of the others.
The disadvantages of using frames are:

Frames are not expected to be supported in future versions of HTML

Frames are difficult to use. (Printing the entire page is difficult).
The web developer must keep track of more HTML documents

The HTML frameset Element

The frameset element holds one or more frame elements. Each frame element can hold a separate
document.
The frameset element states HOW MANY columns or rows there will be in the frameset, and HOW MUCH
percentage/pixels of space will occupy each of them.
The HTML frame Element
The <frame> tag defines one particular window (frame) within a frameset.
In the example below we have a frameset with two columns.
The first column is set to 25% of the width of the browser window. The second column is set to 75% of
the width of the browser window. The document "frame_a.htm" is put into the first column, and the
document "frame_b.htm" is put into the second column:
<frameset cols="25%,75%">
<frame src="frame_a.htm" />
<frame src="frame_b.htm" />
</frameset>
The frameset column size can also be set in pixels (cols="200,500"), and one of the columns can be set
to use the remaining space, with an asterisk (cols="25%,*").
HTML Frame Tags
Tag

Description

<frameset>

Defines a set of frames

<frame />

Defines a sub window (a frame)

<noframes>

Defines a noframe section for browsers that do not handle frames

Setting the initial contents of a frame

The src attribute specifies the initial document the frame will contain.
The following example HTML document:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>A frameset document</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<FRAMESET cols="33%,33%,33%">
<FRAMESET rows="*,200">
<FRAME src="contents_of_frame1.html">
<FRAME src="contents_of_frame2.gif">
</FRAMESET>
<FRAME src="contents_of_frame3.html">
<FRAME src="contents_of_frame4.html">
</FRAMESET>
</HTML>
should create a frame layout something like this:

and cause the user agent to load each file into a separate view. The contents of a frame must not be in
the same document as the frame's definition.

Navigational frame
The navigation frame contains a list of links with the second frame as the target. The file called
"tryhtml_contents.htm" contains three links. The source code of the links:

<a href ="frame_a.htm" target ="showframe">Frame a</a><br>

<a href ="frame_b.htm" target ="showframe">Frame b</a><br>
<a href ="frame_c.htm" target ="showframe">Frame c</a>
The second frame will show the linked document.

Unit II
Style Sheets: CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is a simple styling language which allows attaching style to
HTML elements. Every element type as well as every occurance of a specific element within that type
can be declared an unique style, e.g. margins, positioning, color or size.
Style Sheets are templates, very similar to templates in desktop publishing applications, containing a
collection of rules declared to various selectors (elements).
Style Sheet Languages
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Applies to (X)HTML as well as XML documents in general
Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)
Often used to transform one XML document to another form, but can also add style
- A styled HTML document

produced by the style sheet style1.css:

Why CSS?
Allows for much richer document appearances than HTML.
Reduce workload by centralizing commands for visual appearance instead of scattered throughout the
HTML doc.
Use same style on multiple pages.
Reduce page download size.
Use HTML for content; CSS for Presentation.
Types
Inline CSS
The first way to use CSS on your website is known as Inline CSS and is used inside the html tag directly
and only affects what is inside that element. This is a useful method when you are doing something like
adding a Drop Cap or something which will only be used once or twice however this isn't ideal if you are
working on a large site.
Here's an example of an inline CSS tag:
<p style="background: blue; color: white;">
Here's our nice white text on a blue background.
</p>
Internal Style Sheet
The second way to utilize CSS on your site is the Internal Style Sheet which is placed in head of your
page between the <head>and</head> tags. You might want to use this when you only have one page
on your website or you need a page to look differently than the other pages which use your main CSS
External Style sheet You could then use your Inline Style Sheets to overwrite anything on a line by line
basis should you need to. Remember, the Inline CSS takes priority over the others.
Here is an example of an internal style sheet:
<style type="text/css">
body {
font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial;
font-size: 12px;
color: #FFFFFF;
}
</style>
External Style Sheet
The THIRD method is the External Style Sheet. This is a document that lives outside of your web page.
By placing some code in the head of your web page between the <head>and</head> tags, you tell
your web page to look for and use the instructions from that file to interpret how to display your page.
This method is useful when you have two or more pages and will allow you to control the look across all
of your pages maintaining a consistent look throughout.
Here is an example of an external style sheet on a page:
<link rel="Style sheet" type="text/css" href="css/main.css" />
The above statement simply tells the browser to pull the style sheet in from an external location.

Using an external style sheet changes to the HTML document format can be done easily. one alteration
to one file is enough to change the entire site design.
@import (imported Style Sheet)
Imported Style Sheet is a sheet that can be imported to (combined with) another sheet. This allows
creating one main sheet containing declarations that apply to the whole site and partial sheets
containing declarations that apply to specific elements (or documents) that may require additional
styling. By importing partial sheets to the main sheet a number of sources can be combined into one.
To import a style sheet or style sheets include the @import notation or notations in the STYLE element.
The @import notations must come before any other declaration. If more than one sheet is imported they
will cascade in order they are imported - the last imported sheet will override the next last; the next last
will override the second last, and so on. If the imported style is in conflict with the rules declared in the
main sheet then it will be overridden.
<LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF="main.css" TYPE="text/css">
<STYLE TYPE="text=css">
<!-@import url(http://www.and.so.on.partial1.css);
@import url(http://www.and.so.on.partial2.css);
.... other statements
-->
</STYLE>
Alternate Style Sheet
Alternate Style Sheet is a sheet defining an alternate style to be used in place of style(s) declared as
persistent and/or preferred .
Persistent style is a default style that applies when style sheets are enabled but can disabled in favor of
an alternate style, e.g.:
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="style.css" TYPE="text/css">
Preferred style is a default style that applies automatically and is declared by setting the TITLE attribute
to the LINK element. There can only be one preferred style, e.g.:
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="style2.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="appropriate style
description">
Alternate style gives an user the choice of selecting an alternative style - a very convenient way of
specifying a media dependent style. Note: Each group of alternate styles must have unique TITLE, e.g.:
<LINK REL="Alternate Stylesheet" HREF="style3.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="appropriate style
description" MEDIA=screen>
<LINK REL="Alternate Stylesheet" HREF="style4.css" TYPE="text/css" TITLE="appropriate style
description" MEDIA=print>
Combine multiple sheets into one
To combine multiple/partial style sheets into one set the TITLE attribute taking one and the same value
to the LINK element. The combined style will apply as a preferred style, e.g.:
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="default.css" TITLE="combined">
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="fonts.css" TITLE="combined">
<LINK REL=Stylesheet HREF="tables.css" TITLE="combined">
CSS Ruleset

There are two types of CSS rules: ruleset and at-rule. Ruleset identifies selector or selectors and declares
style which is to be attached to that selector or selectors. For example P {text-indent: 10pt} is a CSS
rule. CSS rulesets consist of two parts: selector, e.g. P and declaration, e.g. {text-indent: 10pt}.
P {text-indent: 10pt} - CSS rule (ruleset)
{text-indent: 10pt} - CSS declaration
text-indent - CSS property
10pt - CSS value

CSS Rule
-Parts of a style rule (or statement)

-Types of selector strings

Type Selectors:
Universal selectors:
ID selectors:
Class selectors
Pseudo Class selectors

Descendent selectors

At-rule

Where rule applies to li element that is part of the content of an ol element that is part o
the content of a ul element
is a second form of rule

-Reads style rules from specified URL

Must appear at beginning of style sheet

Style Sheets and HTML

Style sheets referenced by <link> element are called external style sheets
Style sheets can be embedded directly in HTML document using <style> element

CSS Rule Cascade

What if more than one style declaration applies to a property of an element?

The CSS rule cascade determines which style rules declaration applies
Rule cascading
Let us consider a style sheet that contains the following rules,
..........
* { font-weight:bold;}
.............
#p3 { background-color:red;}
..........
In such a case, both the rules can be applied to an element with id attribute value p3. That is, if multiple
rules apply to an element, and those rules provide declarations for different properties, then all of the
declarations are applied to the element. But if the rule,
#p3 {font-weight:12pt;}
also appears in the same style sheet for the document, then a conflict will occur and it is important to
know which rule will be applied to the font-weight property of the p3 element. In such situation, the
browser will apply a rule cascading in order to choose the appropriate declaration from multiple
declarations.
Rule cascading: is a multistage sorting process that selects a single declaration from the multiple
declarations and that will apply the property value.
The following rules are used to determine which style rules will apply to a selector, given that it has
more than one style in conflict for that selector.
Step 1:
Gather all rules that apply to the selector
Find all the style declarations that implicitly or explicitly apply to the element or selector
Step 2:
Sort by origin and importance
This is the primary Cascade sorting method. The origin of the declaration is one of the following:
User Agent: It refers any one of the browser software. Style rules occurring in the browser is a
default style sheet that has the lowest precedence. In Mozilla 1.4, the menu View | Use Style
offers a default style sheet.
User: it refers a person who is viewing the document. In Mozilla 1.4, the menu Edit|Preferences|
Appearence allows the user to provide a style sheet. Such user style sheets take precedence over
browser style sheets.

Author: It refers a person who wrote the HTML document and if the style sheet is a kind of
external or embedded style sheet then the origin of the declaration is from Author which takes
precedence over both of these.
A style rule with higher precedence will win over an identical style rule with lower precedence as
shown below:
Lowest
preceden
ce
Origin(Ownership Browser
s):
Defaults
Linked
Specification
Style Shee
Method:
t
Element
Contextual
Selector
Selector
Specificity:
Depth

Highest
<===========
precedenc
=====>
e
Users
Author's
Style Sheet
Style Sheet
Embedded
Style Sheet

Inline
Styles

CLASS

ID

'important'
Style sheet designers can increase the weights of their declarations using important
p { font-size: 12pt ! important; font-style: italic }
In the example above, the first declaration has increased weight, while the last declaration has
normal weight.

A user rule with an important declaration will override an author rule with a normal
declaration.
An author rule with an important declaration will override a reader rule with an important
declaration.

Step 3:
Sort by specificity of the CSS selector
More specific CSS selectors will override more general ones. To determine the "specificity" of a
CSS selector, use the following steps:
a) Count the number of ID selectors
b) Count the number of class and pseudo-class selectors.
c) Count the number of type selectors
Now concatenate these three numbers together to find the exact specificity of the selector. The
selector with the highest specificity number will be used.
Example:
LI
{...}
/* a=0 b=0 c=1 -> specificity = 1 */
UL LI
{...}
/* a=0 b=0 c=2 -> specificity = 2 */
UL OL LI
{...}
/* a=0 b=0 c=3 -> specificity = 3 */
LI.takenote
{...} /* a=0 b=1 c=1 -> specificity = 11 */
UL OL LI.red {...}
/* a=0 b=1 c=3 -> specificity = 13 */
#p3
{...}
/* a=1 b=0 c=0 -> specificity = 100 */
Step 4:
Sort by order specified
If two or more style rules have the same importance, origin and specificity, then the rule that is
specified last wins.

Style Inheritance
All selectors which are nested within selectors will inherit the property values assigned to the outer
selector unless otherwise modified. For example,
<head>
<style type="text/css">
body { font-weight : bold; }
li { font-style : italic; }
p { font-size : larger; }
span { font-weight : normal; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
<li> List item outside and <span> inside </span> a span.
<p>
Embedded paragraph outside and <span> inside</span> a span.
</p>
</li>
<ul>
</body>
The word inside appears with a normal font weight while all other text is bold spaced. The first <span>
will inherit the italic property from its parent <li> element, while the second inherits the larger font size
property from its parent <p> element and italic property from its grandparent element <li>
Similarly the <p> element inherits the italic property from its parent element <li>.
There are some cases where the inner selector does not inherit the surrounding selector's values, but
these should stand out logically. For example,
Body { margin-top: 15px;}
P{ margin-top: 15px; }
property is not inherited; naturally, a paragraph would not have the same top margin as the document
body.

Inline, block, parent, children elements

Inline elements: Elements which do not have line breaks. Can occur in block elements or other inline
elements, cannot contain block elements.
Inline elements in HTML 3.2; EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, TT, I, B, U, STRIKE, BIG,
SMALL, SUB, SUP, A, IMG, APPLET, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, SCRIPT, MAP, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA

Block: Elements which do have line breaks. May occur in other block elements, cannot occur in inline
elements, may contain both block and inline elements.
Block elements in HTML 3.2; H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, ADDRESS, P, DL, DT, DD, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, LI,
DIV, CENTER, BLOCKQUOTE, PRE, HR, ISINDEX, TABLE, FORM.
Parents and children: Elements which either contain (parents) or are in the content of (children) other
elements. For example,
<P>text<STRONG>text</STRONG>text</P>.

P is a parent of STRONG. STRONG is a child of P. If not specified otherwise, children will inherit parent's
properties
CSS Properties

Property is a stylistic parameter (attribute) that can be influenced through CSS, e.g. FONT or WIDTH.
There must always be a corresponding value or values set to each property, e.g. font: bold or font: bold
san-serif.

Shorthand property

Shorthand property is a property made up of individual properties that have a common "addressee". For
example properties: font-weight, font-style, font-variant, font-size, font-family, refer to the font. To
reduce the size of style sheets and also save some keystrokes as well as bandwidth they can all be
specified as one shorthand property font, e.g.:
H1

{font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
font-variant: small-caps;
font-size: 160%;
font-family: serif}

can be all shorthanded to a space separated list:

H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160% serif}
Note: To make things even simpler the line-height property can be specified together with the font-size
property:
H1 {font: bold italic small-caps 160%/170% serif}
Value

Value is a 'physical' characteristic of the property. Property declares what should be formatted, e.g.
FONT while value suggests how the property should be formatted, e.g. 12pt. By setting the value 12pt
to the property FONT it is suggested that the formatted text be displayed in a 12 point font. There must
always be a corresponding property to each value or set of values.
H1 {font: bold 180%}
In the example above the H1 selector is declared the FONT property which in its turn is declared the
values BOLD and 180%.
The values suggesting alternatives are specified in a comma separated list, e.g.
H1 {font-family: font1, font2}

Text Properties
General Comments: These properties let you control basic text formatting. Some of these can also
be applied to non-text elements.
Property Description
Values
Example
textSet the case of the text.
capitalize p {text-transform:
transform
uppercas capitalize}
e
lowercas
Capitalizes the first
e
character of each word in
none
the paragraph.
H2 {text-transform:
uppercase}

verticalalign

text-align

textindent

lineheight

wordspacing

letterspacing

Aligns the element vertically to the baseline.

Can be very useful with images.

Aligns the element horizontally across the

page or within division

Sets the amount of indent for the first line of

a text block

baseline
sub
super
top
text-top
middle
bottom
textbottom
left
right
center
justify
CSS
length
%

Also known as "leading" or "line space."

Specifies the distance between baselines of
consecutive lines of text.

normal
CSS
length
%

Lets you control the space between words.

normal
CSS
length

Lets you control the space between letters.

normal
CSS
length

Displays all level two

headlines in all uppercase
characters.
img {vertical-align: middle}
Places the image in the
middle of the baseline.

H3 {text-align: center}
Centers all level three
headlines.
p {text-indent: 2em}
Indents the first line of the
paragraph 2 em spaces.
p {line-height: 12pt}
Sets 12 points of space from
baseline to baseline in
paragraph.
p {word-spacing:1pt}
Puts an extra 1 point of
space between each word in
the paragraph
p {letter-spacing: 0}
Prevents any extra space
from being added between
letters in a paragraph.

textdecoratio
n

Sets underlining, overlining, strike-through, or

blink attributes for the element. Vendors may
be adding their own text decoration formats,
as well.

underline
*overline
linethrough
*blink
none

H1 {text-decoration: blink}
Make all level one headlines
blink. We don't recommend
that you use blink at all

Font Properties
General Comments: These properties let you control basic font
Propert Description
Values
y
fontSpecifies the font family, or typeface, to family
family
use for the element.
name
You can specify a series of names and
the first available font is used.

fontstyle

fontvariant

fontweight

Specifies the style of type to use for the

element.

Lets you select the small caps style of

the typeface.

Lets you select the weight or boldness

of the font.

generic
name:
serif
sans-serif
cursive
fantasy
monospac
e
normal
italic
oblique

normal
small-caps

lighter
normal
bold
bolder
100
200
300
...
900

characteristics.
Example
p {font-family: futura, helvetica,
arial, sans-serif}
Display the paragraph in Futura, if
available. If not, try Helvetica,
Arial, and finally, any sans-serif
display.

H2 {font-family: futura, helvetica,

arial; font-style: italic}
Uses the italic variation of the
typeface for all level two headlines.
H2 {font-family: futura, helvetica,
arial; font-variant: small-caps}
Uses the small-caps variation of
the typeface for all level two
headlines.
blockquote {font-weight: bold}
Makes the blockquote bold.

font-size

Let you select the size of the type in the

font. Font size may be specified in
absolute units or relative to the
"current" size.

CSS length

p{font-size: 12pt}

%
larger
smaller

displays the paragraph in 12 point

type.
H1 {font-size: 150%}

xx-small
x-small
small
medium
large
x-large
xx-large

Displays all level one headlines at

150% of their normal size.

Placement Properties (Properties associated with box model)

General Comments: These properties let you specify where an element gets placed within its "box."
Propert Description
Values
Example
y
marginPlaces the top margin of the element; you
CSS length
div {margin-top: 2em}
top
can use negative values.
%
auto
Displays the top margin of
**NOTE: For some reason, IE4.0 treats this
the division 2 em spaces
style command like Netscape 4.0 treats the
down the page.
padding properties, i.e. it will add space to
the top of every cellif done with a table. With
<div> the property works normally.
marginPlaces the bottom margin of the element;
CSS length
div {margin-bottom:
bottom
you can use negative values.
%
10%}
auto
**See the note for margin-top
Places the bottom margin
of the div element 10
percent down the page
and diplays the element
from the bottom up.
marginPlaces the left margin of the element; you
CSS length
div {margin-top: 6em}
left
can use negative values.
%
auto
Displays the left margin of
the division 6 em spaces
from the left of the page.
marginPlaces the right margin of the element; you
CSS length
div {margin-right: 1em}
right
can use negative values.
%
auto
Displays the right margin
of the division 1 em space
from the right edge of the
page.
padding- Inserts padding at the top of the element.
CSS length
Table {padding-top: 12pt}
top
(Theoretically. We have only been able to
%
make padding-top along with its related
auto

properties, work with tables.)

paddingbottom

paddingleft

paddingright

borderwidth

borderstyle

bordercolor

border
bordertop
borderbottom
borderleft
borderright

Inserts padding at the bottom of the

element.

Inserts padding along the left side of the

element.

Inserts padding along the right side of the

element.

Sets the width of the element's border.

Sets the style of the element's border.

Sets the color of the element's border.

Sets the width, color, and style of the border

simultaneously

CSS length
%
auto

CSS length
%
auto

CSS length
%
auto

thin
medium
thick
none
none
*dotted
*dashed
solid
double
groove
ridge
inset
outset
color name
hex value
rgb(R%, G%, B
%)
rgb(R, G, B)
width value
style value
color value

Inserts 12 points of space

at the top of every cell in
the table.
Table {padding-bottom:
12pt}
Inserts 12 points of space
at the bottom of every
cell in the table.
Table {padding-left: 2em}
Inserts 2 em spaces at the
left margin of every cell in
the table.
Table {padding-right:
2em}
Inserts 2 em spaces at the
right margin of every cell
in the table.
div {border-width: thin}
Displays a thin border
around the division.
table {border-style:
dashed}
Displays a dashed border
around the table.

table {border-color: red}

Displays a red border
around the table.
table {border: thick
double red}
Displays a thick, double,
red border around the
table.
table {border-top: thin
dashed red}
Diplays a thin, dashed, red
border at the top of the
table.

height

Sets the height of the element.

CSS length

img.button {height: 70px}

**Note: We Properties
have had limited success (with
Sets all button class
Color and Background
Netscape;
no
success
in
IE3.0)
applying
images
to be 70 pixels
General Comments: These properties let you control the color and background
of elements.
width and height to <div> tags, and no
high.
Property
Description
Values
Example
success with images.
color
Sets the color of the color name
p {color: red}
hex value
width
Setselement.
the width of the element.
CSS length
img.button {width:
rgb(R%, G%, B
100px}
Displays the paragraph
text in red.
%)
** See note for height.
rgb(R, G, B)
Sets all button class
background- Sets the color for
color name
H1 {background-color:images
green}to be 100 pixels
color
the background of
hex value
wide.
the the
element.
G%,and
B
Displays
area of all
levelleft}
one
float
Places
element to the rgb(R%,
left or right
right the background
img.button
{float:
%)
headlines
in green. (The effect is like having
flows text around it.
left
rgb(R, G, B)
a green
headline.)
nonebar behind the
Places
a button class
image to the left margin
background- Specifies an image
url(URLname)
blockquote {background-image:
and flows text around it.
image
to use for the
url(..images/sand.gif)}
background of an
element.
Displays the image "sand.gif" in the
background area of the blockquote.
backgroundrepeat

Specifies how and if

a background
image is repeated.

repeat
repeat-x
repeat-y
no-repeat

blockquote {background-image:
url(..images/sand.gif); background-repeat:
repeat}
Displays the image "sand.gif" in the
background area of the blockquote and
repeats the image vertically and horizontally
to fill the entire background area.

backgroundposition

Sets the initial

position of the
background image.

vertical %
horizontal %
top
center
bottom
left
center
right

body {background-image:
url(..images/sand.gif); background position:
center center}
Centers the background image vertically and
horizontally on the initial body screen.