Getting started with HTML
Monday, September 14th, 2009If you don’t have the aspirations to become a true HTML ninja, then you’re going to need to hire a rock star to do the hard stuff. But unless you want to invest a ridiculous amount of money for that rock star’s time, you’re going to need to learn a little about how it works.
So how do you learn HTML? You start with the basics. On Mondays, I will be teaching you some of the concepts that professionals think are “over your head” so that you won’t be lost with this stuff anymore. I am a believer that education is the best way to end the frustrations that we feel on both sides of the client/agency table.
A simple definition of HTML
HTML is a document format. Please let me emphasize that HTML is not a language, even if that’s what the L in HTML stands for (Hypertext Markup Language).
When writing an HTML document, you format your information with tags. The purpose of tags is to give your content meaning. You use tags like <p> to denote a paragraph, <strong> to give emphasis to parts of your text, and <ul> to denote an unordered list of items.
Here is an example using those scenarios above:
<p>This is a paragraph about HTML. With HTML, you can do things like this:</p> <ul> <li>Create an unordered list, which typically appears as a bulleted list.</li> <li>Add emphasis to your text by <strong>bolding it</strong>.</li> <li>Link an HTML document to <a href="http://www.example.com/">another document</a> on the Web.</li> </ul>
How HTML is used
When you go to a website, your web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, etc.) asks a web server for a document. Think of the web server as a computer that’s connected to the Internet whose job is to wait for requests and send out content when those requests arrive.
The web server typically sends HTML back to the browser (though it can send things like movies, images, and PDFs too). The browser then reads the HTML and decides how to display the code.
In your browser, if you go to the View > Source menu to see what the HTML for this page looks like. That was the code that the browser examined to display what you are reading right now.
More to cover
HTML works hand-in-hand with many other technologies, which I will be covering in the coming weeks. I will describe how it works with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a programming language called JavaScript, Flash, search engines like Google, and how it relates to data in a database.
Please ask questions as I describe this stuff. And be sure to point out anything that I may be missing. Clear as mud so far?
