Web Programming for Dummies

Untangling the Web
At one time, you had to learn only one language to writeWeb pages: HTML. As theWeb has
advanced, however, so have the technologies you need to learn in order to create effective and
attractiveWeb pages. As the title of this book suggests, you will be learning a few different
languages: HTML, XHTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript. But before you start learning each of these
languages individually, it helps if you understand what each of these languages does and how they
fit together.
This is not just a theory and history lesson, however; you will be writing your firstWeb page sooner
than you might think, and along the way you will also learn some of the essential background
information, such as what a markup language actually is, the difference between a tag and an
element, and how aWeb page is structured.
As you are about to see, aWeb page is made up of not only the text or images you see when you visit
a site, but also information about the structure of the document, such as what text is a heading and
where each paragraph starts and finishes. Each Web page can also contain general information such
as a title for the page, a description that can help search engines such as Google index yourWeb site,
and links to things called style sheets that change the appearance of fonts, colors, and so on.
In this chapter, then, you will:
❑ Meet HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript and learn what each does
❑ Learn the difference between tags, elements, and attributes
❑ See how aWeb page is structured
❑ Learn why rules that say how a document looks are best kept separate from the content
of the Web page
❑ Cover the differences between writing HTML and XHTML
❑ Meet some of the tools you can use to help you writeWeb pages
❑ Learn the basics of how aWeb page gets to you when you request it
By the end of the chapter you will have a good idea of how Web pages are created, and you will
have built your own first Web page.