World Wide Web and HTML



  1. What is the Web?
    WWW stands for "World Wide Web." The WWW project, started by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics), seeks to build a "distributed hypermedia system." In practice, the web is a vast collection of interconnected documents, spanning the world.
    To access the web, you run a browser program. The browser reads documents, and can fetch documents from other sources. Information providers set up hypermedia servers which browsers can get documents from.
    The browsers can, in addition, access files by FTP, NNTP (the Internet news protocol), gopher and an ever-increasing range of other methods.

  2. What is a URL?
    URL stands for "Uniform Resource Locator". It is a draft standard for specifying an object on the Internet, such as a file or newsgroup.
    URLs look like this: (file: and ftp: URLs are synonymous.) 
       file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip 
   ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors 
   http://www.w3.org:80/default.html 
   news:alt.hypertext 
   telnet://dra.com

    The first part of the URL, before the colon, specifies the access method. The part of the URL after the colon is interpreted specific to the access method. In general, two slashes after the colon indicate a machine name (machine:port is also valid).

  3. What is HTML?
    HTML is HyperText Markup Language. It is a subset of SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language. In a markup language the formatting instructions (tags) are part of the text document. HTML was invented by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva. .

    HTML is a simple, universal mark-up language that allows Web publishers to create complex pages of text and images that can be viewed by anyone else on the Web, regardless of what kind of computer or browser is being used.

  4. Creating HTML
    To create HTML documents, all you need is a word processor (like MS Word) or an editor (Like vi). If you are using a word processor pages should be saved as simple "text" files with an ".htm" or ".html" suffix.

  5. HTML Control
    HTML is just a series of tags that are integrated into a text document. The browser (Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer) display the document according to the HTML directions.. The Client Browser, not the WEB server, is responsible for formatting and displaying the information.

    The first Web browser was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana/ Champaign.

    The first web browser called Mosiac was initially developed using the X Window graphic interface on UNIX systems.

    Mosiac was free and began as an instant sucess giving brith to the World Wide Web.

  6. HTML Tags
    HTML tags are usually English words (such as blockquote) or abbreviations (such as "p" for paragraph), but they are distinguished from the regular text because they are placed in small angle brackets. So the paragraph tag is <p>, and the blockquote tag is <blockquote>.

    Some tags dictate how the page will be formatted (for instance, <p> begins a new paragraph), and others dictate how the words appear (<b> makes text bold). Still others provide information - such as the title - that doesn't appear on the page itself.

    HTML tags are usually (but necesssarily always) paired.. The first tag starts the formatting action. The second tag with a \ directive ends the action. Like <B>Bold </B>.

  7. HTML Page layout
    The basic layout of an HTML document is:
    <HTML>
    <HEAD>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY>
    </BODY>
    </HTML>

  8. A simple HTML Page
    <html>
    <head>
    <title>Unix</title>
    </head>

    <body>
    <h1>Unix Class</h1>

    <p>I am glad this class is over..

    <p>Is the final easy?

    </body>
    </html>

    Unix Class

    I am glad this class is over..

    Is the final easy?



  9. Online Tutorial
    For an introduction to using HTML Please refer to the HTML guide at NCSA.
    http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html

  10. Some HTML tags
    This list is not comprenhensive or commplete. It is presented to get a feel for the HTML tag syntax.
    <a> .. </a>
    Anchor. Create a hperlink. <A HREF="unix.htm">Text</a>
    <b>..</b>
    Bold <B>Bold Text</B>
    <big> .. </big>
    Format the text using bigger typeface <big>Big Text</big>
    <center> ..</center>
    Center the text.
    <center>Centered Text</center>
    <em>..</em>
    Emphasis <em>Emphasied Text</em>
    <Hn> ..</Hn>
    heading style n may be a style from 1 to 6. <H2>

    H2 Style

    </H2> <H4>

    H4 Style

    </H4>
    <HR>
    Horizonal Rule <HR>
    <I> .. </I>
    Italics <I>Italic text</I>
    <img>
    Include an image.<img src="owl.gif">
    <P> ..</P>
    Paragraph

    <P>Paragraph One

    <P>Paragraph Two

    <small>..</small>
    Make the enclosed text <small>small</small>
    <sub> ..</sub> <sup> ..</sup>
    Set subscript or superscript.
    word<sub>13t</sub> gives word13
    while word<sup>13</sup> gives word13.


  11. What about Java?
    Java is a language developed by Sun Microsystems which allows World Wide Web pages to contain code that is executed on the browser. Because Java is based on a single "virtual machine" that all implementations of java emulate, it is possible for Java programs to run on any system which has a version of Java.
© Allan Kochis Last revision 4/21/2000