Html

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.

H yper

T ext

M arkup

L anguage

LET'S BREAK THIS DOWN A LITTLE FURTHER

HYPER

You may have heard the expression "hyper" in describing someone. In simplest terms, it means active, kind of "all over the place". The word "Hyper" as part of HTML is similar in context. It simply means that when you are on the internet using a browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, you can in fact, go "all over the place". In browsing through the World Wide Web (WWW), if you see something you like, you can go immediately to it. There is no set order to do things in. Hyper is the opposite of "linear". Linear means that there is a certain order you must follow such as "you must do this before you can do that". Programming languages such as BASIC and FORTRAN are linear. HTML does not hold to that and allows you to jump to any page on the WWW and at any time. Thus the word HYPER refers to the idea that the text in HTML is not linear.

TEXT

We are working with text only files. More on that in Lesson Two.

MARKUP

"Markup" comes from the fact that in order to create web pages, we will be typing in the text and then "marking up" the text. If you are familiar with WordPerfect, consider this example. Suppose you just typed a document in WordPerfect. If you choose REVEAL CODES from the VIEW menu, the monitor screen or Window splits into two parts. The top half of the screen shows the text you typed in and the bottom half shows the same text but with the words marked up with "codes" or "tags". For example, suppose you typed the following three lines in WordPerfect:

Hi, this is bold

This is italics