Introduction

HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) is easy, really easy. The hardest part of decent web design is getting the look of the site right and accommodating your users.

It's a common misconception that HTML is a programming language. It's not. HTML is a simple text file that is sent to your computer that tells your browser how to display a page. The majority of the text file is comprised of a series of mark-up tags.

So, what does HTML mean? Let's break it down:-

Hyper – When you describe someone as being “hyper” you mean that they are all over the place, bouncing around. This is similar to the hyper in HTML, it simply means that when you are on the World Wide Web (WWW), you can bounce anywhere by following links. Programming languages such as BASIC and PHP are linear, i.e. “you must do this before you do that”. Hyper is the opposite of linear.

Text – Put simply, the documents you use are all text.

Mark-up – When you type the text, certain codes or “tags” are used to mark-up the text. This makes the text appear differently so that you can have bold or italic text. This is common in word processing packages, which also have codes to tell the computer how to layout text or print it. With HTML however, you can type the codes yourself.

Language – This means that you are using a language with all its syntax. As mentioned, HTML is not a programming language. Programming languages are linear and are based on sets of rules that are much harder to learn.