What is HTML?

Don’t be intimidated by the definition now, it will make more since after we break it up and explain it. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a programming language used to format text, images, links, etc.in a way that they can be understood and displayed by a web browser.

The definition may be a bit of a mouthful but let’s discuss what it means. You can skip to the next page at any point using the links on the left or the next button at the bottom of this page.

What is HyperText? HyperText refers to links that are contained within a document, which allow an individual to jump from one point on that document to another point on that document or any other document. When you visualize this concept with many documents with HyperText links to many other documents, as well as back to documents that had links to themselves, it is very easy to see the web structure these links form. This is the reason for the term World Wide Web.

What is a web browser? A web browser is software that is used to view the WWW. Web browsers "interpret" HTML pages and display text, links, images, videos, buttons, etc. There are many popular web browsers available including:

Internet Explorer
Netscape
Mozilla
Opera
Safari
Konqueror

All browsers should display pages the same way, but there are times when the same page will look different on different browsers.

It is a very good idea to install many different browsers for testing purposes since they can display differently on different browsers. There will be more on testing your web site on the Testing page.