HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.
H yper
T ext
M arkup
L anguage
LET'S BREAK THIS DOWN A LITTLE FURTHER
HYPER
You may have heard the expression "hyper" in describing someone. In simplest terms, it means active, kind of "all over the place". The word "Hyper" as part of HTML is similar in context. It simply means that when you are on the internet using a browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, you can in fact, go "all over the place". In browsing through the World Wide Web (WWW), if you see something you like, you can go immediately to it. There is no set order to do things in. Hyper is the opposite of "linear". Linear means that there is a certain order you must follow such as "you must do this before you can do that". Programming languages such as BASIC and FORTRAN are linear. HTML does not hold to that and allows you to jump to any page on the WWW and at any time. Thus the word HYPER refers to the idea that the text in HTML is not linear.
TEXT
We are working with text only files. More on that in Lesson Two.
MARKUP
"Markup" comes from the fact that in order to create web pages, we will be typing in the text and then "marking up" the text. If you are familiar with WordPerfect, consider this example. Suppose you just typed a document in WordPerfect. If you choose REVEAL CODES from the VIEW menu, the monitor screen or Window splits into two parts. The top half of the screen shows the text you typed in and the bottom half shows the same text but with the words marked up with "codes" or "tags". For example, suppose you typed the following three lines in WordPerfect/ NotePad:
Hi, this is bold
This is italics
These words are centered
If you choose REVEAL CODES, you would see the following on the bottom half of your screen in one version of WordPerfect:
[Bold On]Hi, this is bold[Bold off][HRt]
[HRt]
[Italic On]This is italics[Italic Off][HRt]
[HRt]
[Just:Center]These words are centered[HRt]
In other words, the text has been marked up with codes or tags as indicated between the [ ] symbols. Each [HRt] indicates that the ENTER key was pressed. [Bold On] means that everything after this tag is bolded. The [Bold Off] tag simply says that bolding is to end here. Unless you choose REVEAL CODES, you won't see these tags. All word processors have codes that tell the computer how to display the document, how to print it out, etc.
In HTML, WordPerfect tags or the tags from any other word processor won't work. HTML has its own set of tags to mark up text. If you want something bolded or centered, you have to indicate so with HTML tags. WordPerfect automatically puts the tags in for you. In HTML, you must put in the tags yourself. If you want to see the tags for this page, just choose VIEW from the menu bar of your browser and then choose SOURCE or DOCUMENT SOURCE.
LANGUAGE
"Language" means that we are using a language with all its syntax. Note that HTML is not a programming language such as BASIC or FORTRAN. These are linear programming languages and are based on a whole different set of rules and are far more complicated to learn. The HTML language is easy to learn (trust me).