HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, the language that is used to write pages for the World Wide Web. It is not a programming language. Instead, it harkens back to the old word processing programs where you would put "mark up" or formatting codes around text, to make it be italicized, or bold, or underlined.

        HTML continues to evolve, so new things are added to it all the time. Because of this, not all web browsers will display the newest code. Also, as someone once put it to me, HTML tags (the formating codes that are put in < > ) are NOT commands, but SUGGESTIONS. Both the browser used, and the user's preferences, along with the user's screen size and resolution can SEVERELY alter how your page is displayed. For this reason, web page developers who know what they are doing, test their pages with several browsers, in the hopes of keeping the format they want.

And of course, if you are interested in having more control over the appearance, you need to look at Cascading Style Sheets. My Internet page has many additional web resources (towards the bottom of page) including information on

• Basic HTML
• Meta Tags
• Graphics sites
• Image Maps amongst many others, and it constantly grows, so check out my Internet page regularly.

          Here are some resources for learning HTML. It's really not hard to do. Pull up a plain text editor, and just type it in. Have fun.

  HTML References
  • Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI) HTML Tutorial
  • The Bare Bones Guide to HTML
  • Webmonkey's Collection of HTML Help Links
  • Comprehensive HTML Tag List
  • A Beginners Guide to HTML
  • HTML Goodies (Java also. Good site)
  • HTML Help Site by WDG (Web Developers group, also contains CSS and other help)
  • HTML Quick Referenceby University of Kansas
  • Writing HTML
  • Webreference.com Varied resources.
  HTML Validators, Link Checkers
  • W3C HTML Validator
  • Validators and Document Checkers, Link Checkers (big list)