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Unit 1: The .Net Framework
What is HTML? Notes
H-T-M-L are initials that stand for HyperText Markup Language (computer people love initials
and acronyms -- you'll be talking acronyms ASAP). Let me break it down for you:
Hyper is the opposite of linear. It used to be that computer programs had to move in a linear
fashion. This before this, this before this, and so on. HTML does not hold to that pattern and
allows the person viewing the World Wide Web page to go anywhere, any time they want.
Text is what you will use. Real, honest to goodness English letters.
Mark up is what you will do. You will write in plain English and then mark up what you wrote.
Language because they needed something that started with "L" to finish HTML and Hypertext
Markup Louie didn't flow correctly. Because it's a language, really -- but the language is plain
English.
HTML pages are of two types:
1. Static pages
2. Dynamic pages
Static Pages
Static pages, as the name indicates, comprise static content (text or images). So you can only see
the contents of a web page without being able to have any interaction with it.
Dynamic Pages
Dynamic pages are those where the content of the web page depend on user input. So interaction
with the user is required in order to display the web page. For example, consider a web page
which requires a number to be entered from the user in order to find out if it is even or odd.
When the user enters the number and clicks on the appropriate button, the number is sent to the
web server, which in turn returns the result to the user in an HTML page.
It would be difficult to describe early websites as web applications. Instead, the first generation
of websites often looked more like brochures, consisting mostly of fixed HTML pages that
needed to be updated by hand.
A basic HTML page is a little like a word-processing document it contains formatted content that
can be displayed on your computer, but it doesn’t actually do anything. The following example
shows HTML at its simplest, with a document that contains a heading and single line of text:
<html>
<head>
<title>Sample Web Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Sample Web Page Heading</h1>
<p>This is a sample web page.</p>
</body>
</html>
An HTML document has two types of content: the text and the elements (or tags) that tell the
browser how to format it. The elements are easily recognizable, because they are designated
with angled brackets (< >). HTML defines elements for different levels of headings, paragraphs,
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