9.9  HTML: BUILDING YOUR OWN


A growing number of Internet providers let users set up their own Web 
home pages.  If your providers is one of these, and you want to tell the 
world your story, you'll need to know the HyperText Markup Language 
(HTML).  Fortunately, this is tedious rather than difficult to learn, and 
there are HTML "authoring" programs out there that can help reduce the 
burden.  

The basic idea behind HTML is to embed codes within a standard ASCII text 
document that tell the computer displaying the document to do something, 
whether that's to put a word in bold, display an image, or jump to 
another document.   Here's what a simple HTML command looks like:

     <title >Web Intro </title >

HTML commands are always between such brackets.  The first instruction 
tells the computer that what is to follow is a document title and to 
display it at the top of the page (in Lynx, that's actually the top right 
hand corner of the screen).  The ending command, again in brackets, tells 
the computer that that's the end of that instruction. The user doesn't 
see these commands. 

There are similar HTML commands for paragraphs, italics, inserting 
graphics, creating lists, etc.  The command for linking to another 
document elsewhere on the Web looks like this:

      <a href="http://www.std.com/NE/boston.html" >Boston Online</a >

Note that the URL is in quotation marks.  The "a" (or "anchor") command 
tells your Web browser that a link is about to be displayed.  "Boston 
Online" will be highlighted when a user calls up the page. The " </a >" at 
the end tells the browser to go back to normal type. 

To build a Web page, you'll need at least two things.  First is 
permission from your provider and instructions relating to your specific 
site (for example, where to put the documents you create).  Second is a 
guide to HTML (see FYI below) and a word processor capable of creating 
ASCII or text documents.  Third, and optionally, is an HTML authoring 
program that can help relieve you of the drudgery of typing in all those 
HTML commands (again, see FYI below).