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HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is a set of computer commands that indicates how texts and images will appear in your webpage. It is the way to program the visitor's Web browser to display the text and image as you want it to appear.
To illustrate, let's say you wish to show two paragraphs with these two sentences. Let's do this by uisng the <p> symbol:
This is an excellent site. <p> I will definitely recommend this to my friends.
Your visitor will see these two lines as:
This is an excellent site.
I will definitely recommend this to my friends.
The <p> symbol is not seen by your visitor. The formatting is done behind the scenes. There is a host of html commands to do all sorts of things.
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If you are not a techie and have no interest in learning HTML, there is no need to worry. Most authoring software like the one I used for this site does not require any knowledge of html. This is what you call a "What you see is what you get" page creator. In this type of software, you do not see the html codes, but rather they are created automatically as you type, cut or paste. EZGenerator, the software that I used to create this site is an example of this type.
For the more technically inclined, there is another type of program referred to as HTML editors. This allows the user to control the look of the page by entering the html codes himself. Professional Webmasters recommend this method as if is highly effective in optimizing your web pages: the result being, faster-loading pages. However, if you are a beginner and is more interested in marketing, I suggest you take up the WYSIWYG option.
The Different Browsers
To most Web users, browser means Internet Explorer or Netscape as these are the most dominant players. However, you must know that there are other browsers and there are people who actually use other browsers. Here is a small list of the more popular ones with their corresponding URL:
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Amaya
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http://www.w3.org/Amaya/
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HotJava
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http://java.sun.com/products/archive/hotjava/index.html
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Netscape Communicator
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http://www.netscape.com/
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Mozilla Firefox
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http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
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This list is by no means complete. This is just to let you know that when you design a site, you must also check how it will appear in the other browsers.
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Basic Parts of a Web Page
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Although web pages vary widely in design and lay-out, the basic parts remain. Most visitors decide whether they would like to stay longer or click to another site just by looking at the home page:
Title: This is also called the html title. It is located at the very top of the browser window.
URL: This is the address of the site. This site's URL is http://www.clixbiz.com
Header: Most sites have a header, specially those that are meant for business. This normally gives the title of the site and other information such as the purpose and author/sponsor of the site.
Body: This is the major part of the web page and should indicate to the viewer the contents of the entire site and the inended audience. The body most often contains navigation bars, which will give a further indication of the other body parts.
Footer: This gives supplemental information about the site such as about, contact, privacy policy, sitemap, copyright, disclaimer, etc.
To see the basic guidelines in designing a site, click here.
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