Session I - Why learn HTML (In a nutshell)? After all, there are great WYSIWYG editors out there on the market - some are even pretty cheap to acquire and use. There are a couple of reasons to learn the more basic HTML, though. But you may still have questions about what HTML is. And what is WYSIWYG? Or possibly, if HTML is so great, what are the limitations to make us use anything else? Finally, what is in it for me if I learn HTML? Click the links in this paragraph (or just scroll down this page) to learn more. Send comments and suggestions about this site to Dr. Blake West at Blue Valley Schools in Overland Park, KS. Return to the "Build a Home Page" overview or go back to Session I. People who remember word processing programs in the early 1980’s would probably look at HTML (the computer language behind web pages) and see many similarities. In the old days, we used to type some special sequence of keyboard characters to signal the beginning of boldface type and another sequence to signal the end of boldface type. The boldface type wasn’t bold on the screen – it was only bold when it was interpreted by a printer and printed on paper. Similarly, HTML uses some special codes to signal the beginning and end of most formatting commands. And we don’t see what the document will really look like when we are looking at the HTML code. Instead, we must view the HTML with a special interpreter software called a "Browser" to really see the desired appearance with all the formatting in place. Back to the top of the page. So what’s a WYSIWYG web-authoring tool? "Web authoring tool" sure sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Just as modern word processors have improved to the point that we don’t see the "special characters" mentioned above, but we see the actual finished appearance of the document, web authoring tools also display the actual page appearance instead of special HTML codes. That display is called WYSIWYG for the words "what you see is what you get." We can now create web pages and create page layouts with almost the same ease as desktop publishing software – with two major limitations. Back to the top of the page. First, when we create a page layout for a word processor (say, Microsoft Word), we don’t expect the file to be read or used accurately by Claris Works or Word Perfect software. But that is exactly what we expect of web pages. Regardless of the software I use to create a page, I want it to look the same on a Mac, Windows, or UNIX based computer. I want it to look the same regardless of whether I am using Netscape or Internet Explorer. Let’s just say, these high expectations create some problems and things don’t always work perfectly. The second limitation is speed. Early HTML greatly limited page layout commands so that simple commands could be sent along with page content (text and graphics) as fast as possible across slow analog phone lines. Modem speeds have now improved, and reliability and error-correction are much better, but we still limit page layout for the sake of speed and for the sake of consistency between browsers (mentioned above). Back to the top of the page. And what does this mean for me? Learning to use a powerful web authoring tool is the fastest way to create great-looking, sophisticated web pages. But understanding at least simple HTML will do two things. First, when the editor doesn’t seem to create exactly what you want when viewing a page in a browser, a good web programmer can look at the HTML and fine tune to fix things "by hand". We are still early enough in the evolution of web creation software that we have to know how to "get under the hood and fix things ourselves" sometimes. The second reason to understand HTML is to appreciate the basic commands that are available and, whenever possible, build pages using basic techniques so that they will load faster and appear more reliably on all browsers. In Conclusion A person who wants to create a web page with simple content and without much regard for appearance of the page might want to use a tool like "Filamentality" on the Internet. For anyone who is serious about creating good-looking pages, though, learning to use a web creation tool AND learning some HTML are both essential skills for the reasons below:
[Session 1] [Session 2] [Session 3] [Session 4] [Session 5]
[HomePage Overview] [Top] |
