What the heck is HTML?
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It’s the computer language that most web pages are written in.
Even when using a web editor like Nvu or DreamWeaver, those easy drag and drop web page design editors, they all still just create HTML code behind the scenes. They’re specifically designed to save you the time and effort of writing HTML code by hand.
To view HTML code, go to a web page that ends in .htm or .html. It will be shown in your browsers address bar. To see the code, click on View > then Source. This will show you the HTML code. Now some pages are written in .php or .asp or .csf and we’ll cover those later. For now it’s important to look at HTML.
HTML has gone through many changes and updates since it first came out YEARS ago. And to spare you the gory details, there is a major push to standardize the code so that everyone is using the same language, so to speak.
And actually that’s what your web browser, like FireFox or Internet Explorer is for. To display the HTML code into a more enjoyable and simplified web site presentation. Which would you rather look at the source code or the web page in your favorite browser?
Now you could write an entire web page just using HTML. There are several online resources to help you do that (we are currently finishing our HTML tutorial as well). But why would you do that?
Personally, I recommend starting off with a program like the free Nvu (and our free Nvu tutorial lessons) or the more advanced Dreamweaver for all your web site needs.