HTML, like any language, needs to be a clearly defined set of instructions in terms which must be followed and understood by the end user. The document is the mouthpiece of the creator (here, for example, our instructions are set out as ASCII text in a simple wordpad format), and the listener is the world wide web (it is reads the HTML code from the wordpad document, translates and reproduces the "ideas" in a visual form which it publishes on the designated medium i.e. as a webpage on the internet). It must be universal in application otherwise we would there would be inconsistencies and misunderstandings in the content, structure and meaning of the information which we wish to communicate. It is therefore crucial that we understand how to communicate fluently in HTML, otherwise the information we wish to share will become "lost in translation".
The 'instructions' of the HTML are known as tags. Examples are <p> for paragraph, which specifies that a new paragraph is to be inserted; <hr> for horizontal rule, which specifies that a horizontal line is inserted at the place on the document (presumably to act as a a divider) and <ol type=""><li></li></ol> for an ordered list, which specifies that you are making a list of items which are to run in a specific order (i.e. they are numbered, lettered).
If you've ever posted on an internet forum, you might already have a flavour of what the basic tags are and how to use them (I am an absolute stickler for making things <b>bold</b>, <u>underlined</u>and using lots of pretty colours to grab your attention when reading this). The essence of tags is that they must consist of clear instructions, which fundamentally tell the WWW where and when the requested formatting of the ASCII text is to start and where it is to stop on the webpage. A start tag is the instruction in brackets <p>; the end tag is a forward slash preceding the instruction again in brackets </p>. Tags work in pairs; if you only have one, the solo tag will be read as ASCII text only.
Soooo, with the basics in place, we can now confidently write a basic webpage in HTML. The example used in the lecture being:
A Simple HTML Page With Hyperlink
<HTML> <HEAD><TITLE>A Simple HTML Page</TITLE>
</HEAD> <BODY>A web page using HTML to produce
a hyperlink to
<a href="http://www.city.ac.uk/">City University</a>.
</BODY></HTML>The HTML page opens with a <HTML> start tag and closes with a </HTML> stop tag. This tells the receiver that we will be writing HTML code to say what we want to appear on our page. Every webpage has a HEAD and a TITLE is contained within that. The BODY is the context that appears on in the main browser window, which can include ASCII text, images and hyperlinks.
By creating more HTML webpages, you can effectively create a website by linking them together.
Here is my self-made webpage, as published on the City webspace! Liam's webpage
(note how basic it is ... I have included a few links to other webpages, an ordered and unordered list. I did create subsequent pages and an index page to link them all, but clearly I forgot to publish them. D'oh!)
Cascading style sheets (CSS) can additionally be applied to the internet browser you are using to view the HTML code as a webpage, which applies different stylistic qualities to the format, font size, background colours etc.
So if we master the language, create some content and apply a little creativity (and remember to publish it!!!) ... we can all make our thoughts accessible through HTML and the internet!
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