HTML - The Hypertext Markup Language

HTML

is the lingua franca for publishing hypertext on the World Wide Web. It is a non-proprietary format, based upon SGML, for describing the structure of hypermedia documents - plain text (ASCII) files with embedded codes for logical markup, using tags like <A> and </A> to structure text into tables, hypertext links interactive forms, headings, paragraphs, lists, and more. It can be created and processed in a wide range of tools from simple plain text editors to sophistocated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) authoring tools.

HTML 4.0 is the latest (draft) standard, moderately supported by the major browsers. It was designed to address many of the limitations of HTML 3.2 by providing enhancements to tables, forms, and frames. It provides additional capabilities to content providers, by extending HTML to allow the use of scripts, style rules, and objects in HTML documents. And it provides better access to the Web for international users and people with disabilities.

• Introduction to HTML. A quick and easy primer on HTML.

• An Introduction to Web Design. This is a three half-day course designed by Selena Sol. It deals with The Basics of HTML, Hyperlinks and Images, and Advanced Formatting by means of step-by-step instructions, examples, and exercises. Editorial notes by the WDVL staff link the material to more advanced references.

• HTML 4.0 Tags. This article lists all the tags, their possible attributes (and which are required), and which recommendation they are part of, in a single, printable page. A handy resource to bookmark for quick information!

• Cross-Browser Dynamic HTML Articles on developing dynamic HTML that works on both major browsers. Annotated links to the main sites for DHTML.

• The Structure of HTML documents HTML documents are structured into Head and Body.

  Block Elements	Headings, Paragraphs, Unordered, Ordered, and Definition Lists
  Forms	User-input Forms: Text Fields, Buttons, Menus, and more
  Frames	Multi-view presentation of documents
  Links	Hypertext and Media-Independent Links
  Tables	arrange data -- text, preformatted text, images, links, forms, form fields, other tables, etc. -- into rows and columns of cells.
  Text	Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases

• HTML Tools. For creating and manipulating HTML.

• HTML Resources. Further resources for discovering and learning HTML.

• HTML Standards Compliance - Why Bother ?
• What is 'Validation' ? Most pages on the web don't comply with the W3C's HTML specifications. In some cases this is because their authors wanted to take advantage of proprietary extensions; but in many other cases, the pages could easily have been made more compliant without any problem. This article explains what the issues are, and why you should and how you can, bring your pages into compliance with the HTML standards.

XHTML™ 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language A Reformulation of HTML 4.0 in XML 1.0 XHTML is a reformulation of HTML 4.0 as an application of XML 1.0. XHTML 1.0 specifies three XML namespaces, corresponding to the three HTML 4.0 DTDs: Strict, Transitional, and Frameset. Each of these three namespaces is identified by its own URI. XHTML 1.0 is the basis for a family of future document types that extend and subset HTML. Here is a simple example.