Introduction to World Wide Web Authoring © Directorate of Information Systems and Services University of Aberdeen, 1999 Part II

HTML Standards HTML 1: developed at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee et al. HTML 2: included improvements introduced by the NCSA Mosaic browser (forms and in-line images) HTML 3.2: included improvements introduced by Netscape (tables, formatting control etc.) HTML 4.0: support for frames, stylesheets, improved disability features. Approved by the World Wide Web Consortium: HTML is an evolving language

Proprietary HTML Extensions Netscape and Microsoft have both introduced non-standard extensions to the HTML language e.g., Extensions are controversial because: they cause incompatibilities between browsers, and so undermine client independence they provide new features for authors Microsoft and Netscape both currently support HTML 3.2, and in future will support HTML 4.0

HTML Validation to detect typing errors ( ) to detect syntax errors text to ensure conformance to HTML standard HTML validation is important:

Creating HTML Manually You can write HTML in a simple text editor (Notepad, ue, vi) Advantages: Cheap Gain understanding of HTML Disadvantages: Slow Easy to make mistakes Need to understand syntax of HTML

HTML Authoring Tools Provide an easy-to-use interface for creating HTML documents Hide complexities of HTML language (including more complex entities such as tables)

HTML Authoring Tools Examples: Symantec Visual Page Netscape Composer DreamWeaver HoTMetaL Microsoft Word MS FrontPage … and plenty of others!

Symantec Visual Page “What you see is what you get” editing

Netscape Editor / Composer Integrated with Netscape browser Versions for Netscape 3 Gold and for Netscape 4

Microsoft Office “Add-ons” for Microsoft Word Version 1: for Word 6 (Internet Assistant) Version 2: for Word 7 (Internet Assistant) Office 97 Office 2000: fully integrated

© Directorate of Information Systems and Services, 1999 Summary HTML is the native language of the Web There are tools that can help make authoring easier Validation and standards are very important

© Directorate of Information Systems and Services, 1999 Further Information WWW Information Pack: Web Authoring Tools: