HTML-What Is It?

Wondering what HTML is? HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Don't get all excited yet! The language part does not mean programming language in the pure sense. The language is actually a set of predefined instructions for your browser to follow. Your web page is assembled by the browser and not by you. You just tell your browser what to do with your words, graphics and animations. A web page does not contain, for instance, graphics. They are stored someplace else and you tell the browser where to get the image and where to place it on the page.

Wait a minute, I thought I was creating the web page? What's up with the browser? The browser displays the page but it is up to you to draw the blueprint. The browser can't do anything with out your instructions. So that brings us back to the language part. The language is really a set of tags that instruct the browser on how to manipulate your text and graphics. These tags tell the browser exactly where to place your graphics and what color to make your text and what font style, etc. As you can see, you have all the control but without the physical labor involved in building.

Example:

Take your mouse and move your cursor to an empty place on this page. Next, right click on this empty spot and from the menu that appears select view source. What you see is the current page as I typed it and as your browser see's it. These are the instructions that I have given the browser which in turn has followed these instructions and displayed the page the way I want it, hopefully.

It may seem like Greek now but it won't be long before you will be able to look at a web page, just as you did in the example, and start picking out the individual components. Except for some of the more advanced aspects of web page design you will pretty well know what is going on with a web page.