Here are a few definitions and hints which didn't fit in the previous pages well:
Case
HTML tags will currently work whether they are capitals or lower case.
HTML tags were originally in upper case to make them stand out. Now you should get into the habit of using lower case as that is the standard.
Terms
- Tag
- the bit in-between the less than and greater than signs (e.g. <p>)
- Start and end tags
- most HTML tags come in pairs with one opening and one closing (e.g. <p> and </p>)
- Element
- everything inside the start and end tags including both tags (e.g. <p>This is a paragraph.</p>)
- Self-closing tags
- A few tags do not come in pairs. They form an empty element on their own (e.g. <br />)
- Attributes
- within a start tag attributes provide some extra instructions to the browser (e.g. <a href="fred.html">
- Value
- each attributes comes with a value after the equals sign. Get into the habit of putting the value in quotes as some have to be.
HTML, XHTML, XML
Don't worry at the moment about which is which. You have been learning both HTML and XHTML because they are almost the same thing. So far only the self-closing tags have been different. HTML would use <BR> but XHTML uses <BR />. The XHTML way is the way it will be done in the future (including HTML version 5).
Basically, HTML was created and adapted repeatedly. It mixed in structure (paragraphs, headings etc. as you have done) with formatting (which you have not).
Some clever people then decided that structure should be separate from formatting. They created XML for the structure and (mostly) CSS for formatting. Those of us who were less clever got very confused and mostly refused to use XML. XML when used for Web sites looks very similar to HTML but has much stricter rules.
As a compromise XHTML was developed (it almost just grew out of the joining of XML and HTML). XHTML is a bit stricter than HTML but easier to learn than XML. Aim at XHTML for now if you see a choice. There will be much more on this later as you start to understand more. These pages all use and teach XHTML.
HTML version 5 promises to merge HTML and XHTML back into one and extend them.
W3C
The W3C is the body which oversees standardising the Web. Without it different browsers would show Web sites very differently making things very difficult for the Web site developer. Hopefully, you will not need to worry much about Internet Explorer 6 but if you mention it to most experienced Web developers and they will shudder because it failed to follow standards. It is not the only one.
The W3C offers one particular service which is indispensable to anyone using HTML/XML. W3C Validation will be explained on this page in the Intermediate HTML tutorial.
Deprecated tags
This site explains quite a few tags. There are also lots of other tags which you will not learn here. That is because they are deprecated. That means they might still work but it is planned that they will be dropped soon. Do not get into the habit of using deprecated tags.
Conclusion
By now you should be able to create a Web page with almost any sort of content short of multimedia (that comes later). You should now practice creating a few pages and linking them. Remember that the appearance does not matter. When you cannot bear those ugly black and white pages with the boring font any more you can move on to CSS and spice things up.Page creation exercise
