The content of the worldwide web is held on individual web pages which are gathered together to form websites of associated
information. Web pages are connected using hyperlinks. A hyperlink is a link that, when clicked on, takes the website reader to
another web page on the website or to a different website. Websites are held on a computer called a web server , which is
connected to the internet and delivers web pages to users’ computers. When an internet user wants to look at a web page from a
specifi c website, it is the web server’s job to deliver (download) those pages to the user’s computer. Web pages are viewed
through web browsers . These are software application programs which allow internet users to access, retrieve and view
information on the internet. Internet Explorer ® and Firefox are two examples of web browsers which you can use. It is the web
browser which reads document fi les written in Hypertext Markup Language (HtML) and translates them into viewable web pages.
HTML
HTML is a computer language used to create web pages. You can create HTML directly in the
language itself or by using authoring software (such as Adobe ® Dreamweaver ® or Microsoft ®
Expression) which uses templates and wizards to create HTML code. HTML fi les usually have a fi
lename with .htm or.html as the fi le extension; for example, document.htm. HTML is a language
which relies on a series of tags. Tags usually operate in pairs, as shown in the example in Table 1.5
(page 21). There is an opening tag such as <body>, <bp> or <p>, and an end tag. End tags are identifi
ed by starting with the ‘/’ character. For example: </body> closes the section of program called
‘body’; </bp> closes the bullet point tag and </p> ends the paragraph ‘p’. Tags which don’t operate
in pairs include <img> (used to tag an image) and header tags (e.g. <h1>). The content between each
pair of tags is called an HtML element . The language is written as a series of elements. Gradually
the elements build up to
In Table 1.5, the whole code is enclosed within the <html>
</html> tags, which defi ne this code as an HTML program.
Then the section of working code in the example is written
between the <body> and </body> tags. Within this there are
two HTML elements: • A web page heading enclosed between
the <h1> and </h1> tags. The example code in Table 1.5 will
show ‘This is a heading’ as a heading on the web page. • This is
followed by a paragraph of text which is enclosed between the
<p> and </p> tags. The example would show ‘This is a
paragraph’ below the heading. The whole web page is built up
by writing these elements. There are tags used to colour the
website, position objects such as text, graphics and media on
the website and to do all of the other formatting that we see on
websites.