Web Authoring Languages

Student in the library

A web page is a file designed to be viewed in a browser. The file is created in a text editor such as notepad and saved with a .htm or .html extension.
One web page acts as the "home page" to be an introduction to the web site and the contents. This page always has the filename of "index.html"


A web site is a collection of pages relating to a single organization or purpose. The pages are hyperlinked for easy navigation.
You will create a web site with a home page to introduce a reader to all of the web projects you will create.
Your web site is stored on UNH's Unix server under a directory path of: "pubpages.unh.edu"

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Markup Languages

A set of rules to define a format, layout or structure of text within a web page.
The first standardized markup language was developed in the '60's so IBM to create large documents and manuals. The Standard Generalized Markup Language became widely accepted in mid 80's for industries to publish their documents.

Tim Berners Lee adapted SGML to create a "light" version for publishing on the network at CERN. In 1991 HTML became the language to create web pages.

The benefits of HTML include:

  1. Easy to learn
  2. Limited set of codes
  3. Codes are embeded with the content making the page very portable

The drawbacks of HTML include:


A new variant of SGML was defined in 1996 to meet the growing changes in information on the Internet. This language, XML, was developed by W3C as a flexible method to create common information formats and share both the format and the information on the web.

The benefits of XML include:

  1. Separates content of the document from the presentation and format
  2. Can create self-describing codes
  3. Can create custom data structures for industry or company needs
  4. Uses strict adherence to syntax rules
  5. Is case sensitive
      6. XHTML is a subset of XML that is the successor to HTML. It supports backward compatibility to older browsers. It separates the content from the codes.Finally, XML has the ability to extend the language by creating new tags. It has the promise of increased platform interoperability as movile devices are more frequently used on the Web.(See Fleke pg.15-16)
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      XHTML Building Blocks

      1. Document Declaration
        • First line of a web page
        • Identifies the version of xml in use
      2. Document Type (DTD)
        • Specifies the version of XHTML
        • Transitional is backward compatible to older browsers
      3. Elements or tags
        • Tags are enclosed in < and >
        • Most tags such as <head> and <body > are in pairs
        • A standalone tag will not have a paired ending.
      4. Attributes or properties
        • Modify the element
        • Identify the property and the value, such as bgcolor = "yellow"
      5. Comments
        • Notations ignored by the program
        • Use for documentation of page elements
        • Begin with < !-- and end with --> 
      
               In chapter 2 we learned to create these XHTML elements

                The two sections of a web page

                Block-Level tags

                    headings

                    paragraphs

                    lists 

                    blockquotes

                    preformatted text

                Text-level tags

                    logical style

                    physical style

                    font tags that are deprecated in XHTML

                    special characters like a blank space     

                Extra tags

                    Line break tag

                    Horizontal Rule tag

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