All You Need to Know About Hypertext Markup Language
According to abbreviationfinder, Hypertext Markup Language is also known as HMTL, which uses markings to describe how text and graphics should appear in a web browser that, in turn, is prepared to read those markings and display the information in a standard format. Some web browsers include additional marks that can only be read and used by them, and not by other browsers. The use of non-standard marks in places of special importance is not recommended.
History
Html started as a simplification of something called SGML, Generalized Standard Markup Language, much more difficult to learn than HTML and generally used to display large amounts of data that must be published in different ways. The theory says that all marks are not just a formatting code for the text, but have their own meaning. Therefore, everything that can be used must be inside a mark with a meaning. To “read” an HTML page without a web browser, you will need to be familiar with some terms and concepts. The first of them is the source or source code, the way to name all the marks and the text that make up the HTML file. The font is what you will actually see when you use a text editor, and not a web browser, to view the HTML file.
A mark is the basic element of the code that formats the page and tells the browser how to display certain elements. Markups do not appear when Web Pages are displayed, but they are an essential part of HTML authoring. These symbols are essential, as they will indicate to the browser that it is an instruction, not text that should appear on the screen.
There are many brands that need what is called the end brand. Generally, it is the same brand, but with a backslash before its meaning. For example, the mark for the letter in Bold (Bold) is <B> and must be placed before the text on which it has to take effect, putting the closing mark </B> behind it. If it is not closed, there will never be parts of the document that are not displayed correctly or worse, the browser will crash due to incorrect syntax.
An attribute appears directly within a mark, between <> symbols. It modifies certain aspects of the brand and instructs the browser to display the information with additional special characteristics. Although the mark for using an image is <IMG>, they have a required attribute, SRC, that tells the browser where the graphic file can be found. It also has several optional attributes like HEIGHT, WIDTH, and ALIGN.
Most of the attributes are optional and allow you to bypass browser defaults and customize the appearance of certain elements.
Whenever a mark appears with a backslash, such as </B> or </HTML> it will be “closing” or ending the mark of that section. Not all marks have a closing mark (such as the image mark) and some of them are optional (such as <IP>).
An attribute usually has a value; expressed with the equal sign (=). If you use attributes with values, they are always put in quotes, unless they are numbers, which do not need them (although this is a good habit).
Browsers, compatibility
As we have said, the browser installed on the user’s computer is the one that interprets the HTML code of the page they visit, so it can sometimes happen that two users view the same page differently because they have different browsers installed or even different versions. from the same browser.
Today’s browsers claim to be compatible with the latest version of HTML. It is necessary to make extensions to the browsers so that they can be compatible with this latest version.
Two of the browsers that are continually making extensions are Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, which make extensions even before the standards are set, trying to include the new features included in the drafts.
Browsers have to be compatible with the latest HTML version in order to interpret as many tags as possible. If a browser does not recognize a tag, it ignores it and the effect that the tag intended is not reflected on the page.
To make the extensions of these browsers, new attributes are added to existing tags, or new tags are added.
As a result of these extensions, there will be pages whose code can be fully interpreted by all browsers, while others, by including new attributes or tags from the draft of the latest version of HTML, can only be fully interpreted in the most up-to-date browsers..
In the latter case, it may also happen that some tag on the page can only be interpreted by a specific browser, and another tag by a browser other than the previous one, so it would never be viewed in its entirety by any browser.
One of the challenges of web page designers is to make the pages more attractive using all the power of the HTML language but taking into account these compatibility problems so that the greatest number of Internet users see their pages as they have been designed.
Editors
An editor is a program that allows us to write documents. Today there are a large number of editors that allow you to create web pages without the need to write a single line of code [[HTML]. These editors have a visual environment and automatically generate the code for the pages. By being able to see at all times how the page will be in the browser, the creation of the pages is facilitated, and the use of menus allows to gain speed.
These visual editors can sometimes generate junk code, that is, code that is useless, on other occasions it may be more effective to correct the code directly, so it is necessary to know HTML to be able to debug the code of the pages.
Some of the visual editors with which you can create your web pages are Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage, Adobe Pagemill, NetObjects Fusion, CutePage, HotDog Proffesional, Netscape Composer and Arachnophilia, of which some have the advantage of being free.
In aulaClic you can find Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage courses, two of the most used editors today.
It is advisable to start using a tool that is as simple as possible, so that we have to insert the HTML code ourselves. This allows you to become familiar with the language, to be able to use a visual editor later, and to debug the code when necessary.
To create web pages by writing the HTML code directly, you can use any plain text editor such as Wordpad or Notepad in Windows, or the powerful Vim or Emacs editors in Unix and GNU / Linux environments mainly.
Labels
Tags or marks delimit each of the elements that make up an HTML document. There are two types of tags, the beginning of an element and the ending or closing of an element.
The start tag is delimited by the characters <and>. It is made up of the identifier or name of the tag, and it can contain a series of optional attributes that allow adding certain properties. Its syntax is: <identifier attribute1 attribute2…>
The attributes of the beginning tag follow a predefined syntax and can take any value of the user, or predefined HTML values.
The end tag is delimited by the characters </ and>. It is composed of the identifier or name of the tag, and does not contain attributes. Its syntax is: </identifier>
Each of the elements on the page will be found between a start tag and its corresponding end tag, with the exception of some elements that do not need an end tag. It is also possible to nest tags, that is, to insert tags between other beginning and ending tags.
It is important to nest the labels well, the labels cannot be ‘crossed’, in the example we start with the <p..> tag, before closing this tag we have put the <font..> so before closing the tag <p..> we must close the tag <font..> tag.