TUTORIAL HTML : HTML 4

Table of Contents:

1. About the HTML 4 Specification 

2. Introduction to HTML 4

3. On SGML and HTML

4. Conformance: requirements and recommendations

5. HTML Document Representation - Character sets, character encodings, and entities 

6. Basic HTML data types - Character data, colors, lengths, URIs, content types, etc

7. The global structure of an HTML document - The HEAD and BODY of a document

8. Language information and text direction - International considerations for text 

9. Text - Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases 

10. Lists - Unordered, Ordered, and Definition Lists

11. Tables 

12. Links - Hypertext and Media-Independent Links 

13. Objects, Images, and Applets 

14. Style Sheets - Adding style to HTML documents 

15. Alignment, font styles, and horizontal rules 

16. Frames - Multi-view presentation of documents 

17. Forms - User-input Forms: Text Fields, Buttons, Menus, and more

18. Scripts - Animated Documents and Smart Forms 

19. SGML reference information for HTML - Formal definition of HTML and validation

20. SGML Declaration of HTML 4 

21. Document Type Definition

22. Transitional Document Type Definition 

23. Frameset Document Type Definition 

24. Character entity references in HTML 4

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Quick  Description :  



2.2 What is HTML?

To publish information for global distribution, one needs a universally understood
language, a kind of publishing mother tongue that all computers may potentially
understand. The publishing language used by the World Wide Web is HTML (from
HyperText Markup Language).
HTML gives authors the means to:

• Publish online documents with headings, text, tables, lists, photos, etc.
• Retrieve online information via hypertext links, at the click of a button.
• Design forms for conducting transactions with remote services, for use in searching for information, making reservations, ordering products, etc.
• Include spread-sheets, video clips, sound clips, and other applications directly in their documents.

2.2.1 A brief history of HTML:

HTML was originally developed by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN, and popularized by the Mosaic browser developed at NCSA. During the course of the 1990s it has blossomed with the explosive growth of the Web. During this time, HTML has been extended in a number of ways. The Web depends on Web page authors and vendors sharing the same conventions for HTML. This has motivated joint work on specifications for HTML.

HTML 2.0 (November 1995, see [RFC1866] [p.356] ) was developed under the aegis of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to codify common practice in late 1994. HTML+ (1993) and HTML 3.0 (1995, see [HTML30] [p.355] ) proposed much richer versions of HTML. Despite never receiving consensus in standards discussions, these drafts led to the adoption of a range of new features. The efforts of the World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML Working Group to codify common

practice in 1996 resulted in HTML 3.2 (January 1997, see [HTML32] [p.356] ).

Changes from HTML 3.2 are summarized in Appendix A [p.311].......

                                            

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