TU170 - HTML and HTML Editors
Word processor documents may contain some bold text, and some in different fonts and sizes i.e. the formatting of the document to make important bits stand out. The program knows how to display the document as within the document there are codes as well as text that the word processor uses to format the document you see on the screen. A document created on one word processor cannot be read on different one as each program has its own set of codes, that's not quite true you can save you document as an .rtf file which is readable by most programs. The more expensive word processors usually come with format converters to allow you to read documents created with other programs.
The World Wide Web uses a set of codes for formatting pages and this is known as HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The codes in HTML are referred to as tags i.e. headings, lists, links, and so on.
HTML Tags
What's an HTML Tag? The heading above this paragraph is known as a first level heading in HTML and to make it appear as it does the code in this page has <h1> </h1> tags wrapped around the 'HTML Tags' heading. The <h1> tag marks the start of formatting and the </h1> makes the end of formatting. This is how it looks in the code of the page
<h1>HTML Tags</h1>
When you view a page with a browser you will not see the tags under normal circumstances. If you open a HTML document with Notepad you will be able to see all the tags in the document, notice how there is nearly always an opening tag like the <h1> and a closing tag like the </h1>. Most browsers have a command, such as 'View source', which displays the page with all its HTML tags.
Editors for HTML
HTML is incredibly easy to learn and use and using the basic tags with Notepad as the editor simple webpages can be produced quite quickly. HTML consists of a set of predefined tags that are included along with the page content. The purpose of these tags is to instruct the browser how to display the content i.e. whether the text should be displayed as a paragraph. The tags also allow for a certain amount of formatting of the information in the document, such as image positioning.
However, as the web has become more popular, people have created more elaborate web pages, with complex layouts and more interactivity. More tags have been invented which are not so easy to create using a text editor.
Most modern HTML Editors are just like using a word processor they will insert the HTML tags for you.
Word processors such as MSWord have commands such as 'Save as HTML', which converts an ordinary word processed document into HTML by inserting the necessary tags automatically.
Basic Editors and 'WYSIWYG' editors
The early HTML editors were developed from editors used by programmers. A basic HTML editor would be something like Notepad where the whole page has to be hand-coded including the formatting.
Modern HTML editors are WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) and are in the most part extremely easy to use.
Most modern HTML Editors are just like using a word processor they will insert the HTML tags for you. Word processors such as MSWord have commands such as 'Save as HTML', which converts an ordinary word processed document into HTML by inserting the necessary tags automatically.
Is there still a need to learn HTML?
Most of you will be using WYSIWYG editors which means you do not need to know these, only people who are hand coding really need to know HTML Code. However if you are going to try something out of the ordinary it helps to know some of this when debugging faulty code and also dependant on how good your editor is will depend on how much of the coding it will do for you.
The good news is that HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is incredibly easy to learn.