HTML Concept

A LAMP web server presents itself to the world through a network cable (the computer itself likely does not have a keyboard or a video monitor). When you point your web browser at the URL or IP address of the server it responds by sending a web page. What exactly does it send down the wire? The most basic of all web concepts is that pages are just text with interspersed tags that tell the browser about the formatting and the look of the page. HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is the term used to describe this interweaving of the text and the tags that tell the browser how to format it. What really is a website then? It is just a directory full of text files having names like thispage.html, thatpage.html and otherpage.html. When browsers request these files from the web server they are said to be 'visiting' the website.

All software that simplifies or helps automate the creation of web pages writes this HTML, there is no way around it. Thus, if you know how to write HTML yourself you can do anything, no other tools are needed (except a text editor). No web creation tool out there supports the full power of HTML, they all restrict you in some way. People who say you do not need to know HTML say that because they do not know it.

At its simplest, HTML simply specifies the look of text. For example, you bold a word like this:

<b>bold</b>

But look at this bold word. You cannot see the <b> and </b> tags around it word because the browser is not displaying them (it is just obeying them, or more correctly, interpreting them as instructions on what to do with what is between).

You italicize a word like this:

<i>italic</i>

Headings like this:

<h1>Main Heading</h1>
<h2>Second level heading</h2>

Fonts like this:

<font face="serif">This phrase is in a Serif font</font>

Colored text is done like this:

<font color="red">This is red text</font>

A horizontal rule simply like this:

<hr>

Pictures are inserted on the page like this:

<img src="mypicture.jpg">

and there are ways to control where the image is placed.

There are other tags to justify in different ways, control margins, arrange things as a table, etc.

However, the webserver software (Apache in our case) also parses web pages looking for 'server-side' program code (e.g. PHP) intermingled with the HTML and text (its boundaries are marked with special tags depending on the programming language). This code can communicate with other servers (e.g. SQL database servers) and do all sorts of calculation and processing tasks to shape the way the page is sent to the browser. In addition, the browser also parses the HTML it receives from the server looking for 'client-side' program code (e.g. javascript), it also has boundaries marked with special tags according to the language. Client-side scripts can perform graphic and computation tasks in the browser window and also communicate with other servers and update parts of the page. An HTML page can be a 'very busy place', until you at least understand all the things that can be found there and what they do you will never really understand the web.

One question you might be asking is: How do I actually write an HTML web page? The answer is simple. Start your text editor (e.g. Windows Notepad) and start typing. Then save the page onto your desktop and name it myfirstpage.html. Then double-click it. It will open in your web browser. Now make a change in Notepad, save it, and refresh the page in your browser. Now visit http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp and learn HTML and overview Web Building (do not get sidetracked by all the other things there yet or if you do not understand much of what you read. Persevere.).

Now here is a harder question: How do I write one of the hybrid pages (with program code and HTML) and get it onto the web server? Write the page in Notepad and then use an FTP program to transfer it from your computer to your web server (your ISP will have given you an address, username and password to give to your FTP program). Now visit the URL with your browser. Make a change, FTP it again, and refresh the browser. You are programming on the server and have the power to create the next ebay or facebook. Now visit http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp and start learning PHP, CSS, SQL and Javascript. Now dream and do.

Only custom-written web components can go down any road you choose!

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