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| Congratulations on taking the first step in designing and maintaining a website. To compete in today’s real estate marketplace, the skills you will learn here are paramount to success. Knowing basic web design skills and the principles behind them will give you the edge that can make or break a career. Good luck and happy designing! |
Hypertext Markup Language, better known as HTML is a pseudo-language. This means that it is not a full fledged programming language. Fortunately, it is much simpler and easier to understand. In fact, with a little guidance and explanation you should be able to write your first web page in HTML in about ten minutes.
Generally speaking, you will most likely be using tools that will write the HTML code for you. However, it is good to know how it works, so you have a solid understanding of the design process. At times, you may want to alter the code directly.
What HTML does
HTML is basically a blueprint for a webpage. When you visit a webpage, you are using a browser. Most likely, you are familiar with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or a similar program that you use to surf the net. As you probably know, these applications are browsers. A browser is essentially a program that reads HTML and constructs a web page.
You see, when you visit a website, the web server sends the html code to your computer. Once your computer receives the code, your browser builds the web page based on the instructions (html).
The various browsers will interpret the code a little differently, producing slightly different results. For instance, two builders might make subtle differences in building a house based on identical blueprints. The basic structure of the house would be generally identical (hopefully), but minor details might be different between the two. Some of these difference may be due to how the builder interpreted the blueprints, or perhaps in the methods used to carry out the instructions, etc…
The main concept to realize here is; the webpage is constructed on the visitors computer, not the web server. The web server simply sends the necessary code and any files (pictures, zips, etc…). The browser then assembles the files and text and presents you with your finished web page.
So you see html powers the web. There are other languages that add different levels of functionality. Some are variations of HTML, some are programming languages that add functionality to HTML. They do so using different methods and have different rules and properties then HTML, however that is out of the scope of this class and will not be explored at this time.
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