HTML

"How to Profit by Learning the Foundation Language of the World Wide Web"

If you want to make money on the Internet in the course of your computer career, you’ll have an easier time if you know HTML. That’s true if you have your own web site, even if you use an HTML editor such as FrontPage 2000. It’s true if you want to work in Internet web site design or maintenance for a company. Even if you want to write Java programs, you will need to know how Java fits into a web site.
Even if you see into the future of the Net (which, amazingly, many people don’t) and see Virtual Reality on the not too far distant horizon, you will need to learn HyperText Markup Language before you can expect to start programming with Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML).
HTML stands for hypertext markup language. It is actually a sub-language of SGML, Standard Generalized Markup Language. SGML actually goes back long before computers, beginning as a way for publishers to layout pages.
HTML is actually just instructions to your browser to display certain web page elements a certain way.
For instance, I’ve instructed this page’s HyperText Markup Language to display the second from top line as "H1," which means to display the page title in the largest typeface.
The magic of HyperText Markup Language lies in its ability to link documents or sections of documents together. The "hypertext" activates the Worldwide Web "hypertext protocol" (the "http" all web surfers know and love), so it sends your browser to the specified url.
It’s one of those things that we take for granted after we’ve been online for a few weeks, but is truly an amazing power. Through those simple links, it’s possible to access most of the data and information in the world.
It has been a basic part of email programs for years, and Word 2000 now has editing capability, so people are more and more going to be including links in email, file attachments, etc.
HyperText Markup Language is not going away.
It will expand and grow as computer bandwidth and capabilities and our needs and aspirations and imaginations grow. It will not disappear. It will continue as the foundation of DHTML (Dynamic HTML) and the previously mentioned VRML, and whatever it evolves into in the future.
It’s possible to surf the Net and do lots of neat stuff online without knowing any HTML – I did that for nearly 4 years. But if you want to make money online, you must learn it.
Fortunately, learning it for your computer career is easy.
There are classes and tutorials available offline and online. Also, many books and CD-ROMs.
Every web site you go to can teach you something. Simply click on View, and then Page Source. Right before your eyes, you’ll see that gorgeous web page disappear and turn into a mish mash of text with lots of <>s in it. Combine that with book learning and creating your own simple web sites, which you can do with any ASCII text editor (I just use Wordpad), and you’ll soon pick up all the basics.
You could actually use Wordpad to create all the web pages you’ll ever need, but that would be tedious. Editors such as Frontpage 2000, Hot Dog, Dreamweaver and Fusion were created to take the detail work out of it, leaving you free to apply your creativity to your web design.
My own advice, for what you think it’s worth. The worst thing Netscape ever did was introduce frames. I've glanced over the frames sections of my books, but I haven’t tried to learn those tags. I don’t consider learning frames any more necessary to writing it than learning legal jargon is necessary to for nonlawyers to speak English.
They can seem "neat" when they work right, but if you’re on the web for money, leave neat for kids.
Frames screw up the back button of browser, making it more difficult for your customers to navigate. This frustrates them and makes them less likely to buy from you. Frames screw up your standings in search engines, so small businesses depending on search engines to bring them targeted traffic should avoid frames.
Being bought out by America Online was the karmic punishment Netscape suffered for introducing frames. They meant well, but we all know what road is paved with good intentions.
To make up for it, they have introduced cascading style sheets to make beautiful web design easier. This is good, but don’t get carried away with it. Many people on the Net still have older versions of browsers and your carefully designed pages might look like a mess to them, even though you’re winning prizes on your computer job from people with new version browsers.
The best way around this for now, until you’re sure 99% of your target market is using a browser that supports cascading style sheets, is to design with tables.
In fact, the most difficult aspect of designing web sites is not learning it at all, it’s learning all the possible variations based on brand and version of browser. Netscape Navigator can interpret the same code a lot differently than Internet Explorer. The later versions (4.0 and above) of both programs will understand instructions that versions 1 – 3 of both browsers will not.
The previously mentioned DHTML really has two very different versions, one supported by Netscape and one supported by Microsoft.
If you are designing for a company intranet, this is not a problem because you’ll know exactly which browser everybody is using. Those of us on the Internet, however, face a situation only a little more organized than chaos.
The only real solution is to keep it simple.
Design for the lowest common browser version. Save the fancy stuff for the time when it’s common and no longer cutting edge.
Heck, I understand. Netscape is promoting 4.73 as I write, and I haven’t had time to download it yet myself, so I can’t expect everybody else to stay up to the minute either.
The day is soon coming when it will be as necessary for an "educated" person to know and use basic HyperText Markup Language as, up until a short time ago, especially in Europe, it was necessary for an "educated" person to know and use basic French.