Chapter 1 Basic Concepts

Web Servers and Web Browsers:

A web page is stored on a Web Server, which makes the page available to users of the web. To view the page, the user runs a Web Browser, a software program that retrieves the page from the web server and displays it.

HTML - The Language of the Web:

Web pages are text files, written in a language called Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. A markup language is a language used to describe the content and format of documents. The success of the World Wide Web is due in no small part to HTML. HTML allows Web authors to create documents that can be displayed across different operating systems and different browsers. HTML code is easy enough to use that even nonprogrammers can learn to use it. Millions of Web sites are based on HTML, and there is every indication the HTML will continue to be the dominate language of the Web for a long time to come. HTML describes the format of Web pages through the use of tags. Text appearing in the documents heading is marked with a tag. Text appearing in a bulleted list is marked with a list tag, and so on. Its the job of the web browser to interpret these tags and render the text accordingly.

Tools for Creating HTML Documents:

Because HTML documents are text files, the only software you need to create them is a basic text editor, such as Windows Notepad, and a web browser such as Internet Explorer.

Creating an HTML Document:

An HTML file contains both formatting tags and content. Document content is what the user sees on the page, such as headings and images. Tags are the HTML codes that control the appearance of the document content. The HTML syntax for creating the features of a page follows a very basic structure. HTML tags are applied to document content using the following structure:

<tag attribute>document content</tag>

Where tag is the name of the HTML tag, attributes are properties of the tag, and document content is the actual content that appears in the web page. This type of tag is known as a twosided tag because it contains an opening tag that tells the browser to turn on a feature and apply it to the content that follows, and a closing tag that turns off the feature. Note that the closing tags are identified by the slash (/) that precedes the tag name. Not every tag is two-sided, some tags are one-sided tags or empty tags, because they require only a single tag without content. The syntax for a one-sided tag is simply:

<tag attribute>
A one-sided tag is used to insert non character data into the web page, such as a graphic image or a video clip. The <br> tag is an example of a one-sided tag because it does not require a closing tag. Tags are not case sensitive. Browsers typically treat the <h1> tag as they do the <H1> tag. However, in the interest of consistency, the current standard is to display all tags in lowercase letters. Well follow this lowercase convention throughout the course.