Create It ~101; Basic HTML-definitions & other help

Definitions & Other Help

You also need a web browser to view how your web pages look before sending them to the web. You can obtain a browser using FTP (see below for details). You can then use your browser even when you are offline to see how your pages look.

Some Basic Terminology

HTML: Stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the basic "language" that web pages are written in.

ANGLE BRACKETS: These two characters < and > appear on your keyboard as [shift key] + comma and [shift key] + period. They are used to set HTML tags off from the rest of the text on the page. All HTML tags are surrounded by these two symbols.

TAGS: These are the embedded words and/or symbols that enable us to turn ordinary text into HTML. <HTML> and </HTML>, for example are the opening and closing tags that indicate a document is written in HTML.

SERVER: The server is the computer on which your web pages will reside.

FTP: Stands for "File Transfer Protocol," one of the ways to send files from one computer to another on the Internet so that they can be viewed by others on the web.

URL: Stands for "Uniform Resource Locator." The "URL" is the "address" of a webpage. For example, the "URL" or address of the my home page is http://www.oocities.org/SiliconValley/6658/

HYPERLINKS/LINKS: These are the HTML coded locations, usually set apart by a different text color and underlining, that lead you to other places on the web (to another URL for example) or to another spot within a particular page.

HOME PAGE: The first page that is seen when you visit a URL or the first/main page of your web pages.

Obtaining Browsers Through FTP

If you need to get a browser to view your HTML documents and are without web access, you can get Netscape Navigator FTP at ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/navigator/.

If you prefer, Microsoft Internet Explorer can be obtained via FTP at ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/msdownload/.

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