HTML, CSS, Javascript and the Internet

Over the past two of decades, the Internet has expanded by leaps and bounds to become a network spanning the Globe. It has created countless opportunities to share ideas and opinions , access vast stores of knowledge, and conduct trade and advertising at a far lower cost than was possible before the creation of the World Wide Web.

To accomplish this a number of technologies have evolved to allow the production of increasingly sophisticated web pages and user interfaces. Chief among these technologies are Hypertex Markup Language, Cascading Style Sheets and Javascript.

What is HTML?

Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML is the language of the Internet.

It was created as a method of displaying platform independent electronic documents which can be formatted and displayed by a web browser or other program regardless of the computer operating system that is used. The achievement of this goal has been somewhat difficult as the development of HTML has been pulled in many directions by various public, private and commercial interests.

HTML - How Does It Work?

HTML made up of various tags which are codes made up of letters and numbers and their associated attributes. The tags or elements are instructions to the web browser on how the document should be structured or references to content to include within the rendered document.

HTML Tags are alway enclosed in right angle brackets and most of the tags used will have opening and closing elements. For example the paragraph tag which is <P> which will contain a block of text. The closing tag for the text will be </P>

<P> The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. </P>

Basic Structure of an HTML Document

<!DOCTYPE html>
<HTML LANG="en">
<HEAD>
<META CHARSET="UTF-8">
<TITLE>Web Page Title </TITLE>

<META NAME =" description" CONTENT= "Short description of page content" >

<LINK REL="stylesheet" TYPE = "text/css" HREF= "stylesheetname.css" >

</HEAD>

<BODY>

<H1>Headline </H1>
<P>Text - The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. </H1>
</BODY>

</HTML>

HTML Tag List

Web Page Examples Showing What HTML and CSS Does

HTML5 is supposed to be the latest and greatest iteration

HTML5 introduces several so called Semantic Tags to be used in place of DIV at least in part. Named for the purpose for which they are intended to be used. Most Semantic Tags seem to be of more benefit to search engines and non-human readers of webpages than they are for the web developer.

A simple webpage example using some of the new HTML5 Semantic Tags

The use of DIV is as relevant with HTML5 as it is with HTML4. It remains to be seen how widely accepted these new elements will become particulary since there is no Windows XP compatible version of Microsoft Internet Explorer which recognizes the new HTML5 tags.

Adding Functionality to a Webpage With Javascript

HTML is a markup language used to format a webpage. Javascript is a programming language that can be used to dynamically change the content of a webpage, sort html tables and do a host of other things to improve the web visitors experience.

Adding Javascript to a webpage.