Product Description
From the Inside Flap
This book is for anyone and everyone who wants to put information on the World Wide Web. Here you will find an organized and detailed description of the Web publishing language HTML written for both the complete novice (What is the difference between the Web and the Internet? What is a browser? What is HTML?) and for the advanced user. Whether you or your organization are new to the idea of publishing on the Web, or whether you are an experienced WebMaster looking for the perfect HTML companion book to supplement your reading, HTML 3: Electronic publishing on the World Wide Web will be immensely useful to you. The book contains teach-yourself material, reference material and a wealth of examples drawn from the Arts, literature, science, mathematics, classics to make the HTML truly accessible to everyone.
New HTML features included
The book covers many new HTML features which are likely to find their way into a new HTML 3 standard. These include style sheets for HTML documents which will be supported by Microsoft this year, a new standard HTML tag for multimedia applications, and features for more sophisticated forms and tables. You will even find a chapter on marking up maths, chemistry and other scientific material for publishing on the Internet. This, a whole new area of HTML is likely to implemented in the near future.
Which versions of HTML does this book cover?
Those already familiar with HTML will be aware that the language does not have a closely defined set of features. To start with there is more than one "version" of HTML and, to complicate matters further, different browsers have developed their own special HTML features or "extensions". To make it clear to which "version" of the language a given feature belongs, and also whether that feature is an extension peculiar to one or other browser, we have used a system of icons.
Since publishing his HTML 3.0 draft, Dave Raggett has been assimilating comments and suggestions on the proposal and has revised many aspects of his specification accordingly. These revisions, along with some entirely new features, are likely to find there way into an official HTML 3 standard to be agreed by major browser vendors during 1996.
The authors point out that HTML is very much a moving target and, although they have done their very best to keep up-to-date, things are changing all the time. The latest on HTML is available on the Web itself and references to the relevant pages are given in the text.
About the authors
Having worked in conjunction with Tim Berners-Lee, Mark Andreesson, Dan Connelly and others involved in shaping the Web from the start, Dave Raggett is one of the lead architects of HTML. Dave defined HTML+ and also HTML 3.0 and set up and co-chaired the Internet Engineering Task Force HTTP working group, responsible for the International standards associated with the Web protocol. Dave is currently Visiting Scientist at the World Wide Web Consortium where he continues to pursue a major role in HTML development. He works closely with member organizations and recognized experts in the field, refining and testing the Hypertext Mark-up Language. Recently, Dave has worked together with the World Wide Web Consortium to bring together companies including IBM, Microsoft, Netscape Communications Corporation, Novell, Spyglass and SoftQuad for joint work on HTML development activities. The aim is to establish international standards for HTML features such as multimedia objects, style sheets, forms, scripts, tables, high quality printing, as well as improved access for the visually impaired. Many of these features are explained in this book. and are likely to be included in a formal definition of the HTML 3 standard to be finalized during the course of 1996.
Jenny Lam and Ian Alexander are technical writers who aim to explain and present technology to a wide audience. Ian is also a software engineer who teaches requirements engineering, builds prototypes and runs a Web site.
An insider's perspective
This book offers more than a simple description of HTML as an on-line publishing language. There is a history of the Web and an explanation of the technology behind it. We plot the development of HTML and look at the rationale behind its various features with a critical eye. Much of this discussion is aimed at the non-technical reader and is as much as possible free from jargon and hype. The authors also offer valuable insights into the Web community - the technical people involved in HTML development: how they work, their culture, their aspirations and so on.
VRML - The Virtual Reality Modelling Language
Dave Raggett is also known for coining the term "VRML" the Virtual Reality Modelling Language - a language to be used to generate three-dimensional interactive graphical virtual "worlds". Virtual reality in the context of the Web is an up-and-coming topic and is also discussed in the book at an introductory level.
The Web and society
The authors believe that the merits of any new technology should be considered in the context of society as a whole. With this in mind a section of the book is devoted to the effects of the Web on how people might work, interact and do commerce in the future. We include an account of one of the first cyber-cafés. You may guess from some of our cartoons and examples that we imagine that the Web may become part of life, but not vice versa!
Overall structure
The book starts off by explaining basic concepts of the Web at "layman level" and giving background information about how and why HTML was conceived and the roles played by key companies and people in its development and evolution. There is also a chapter written for the novice on the process of designing a simple Web site which is illustrated with real examples from the Web and an amusing imaginary Theatre on the Web. This simple but informative example shows a seating plan, playwrights etc., all marked up in HTML. The beginner learns about HTML Life Cycle, structuring a Web site, navigational aids, and the importance or requirements and testing.
Early chapters are complemented by tighter and more definitive sections explaining the concepts and terminology of HTML, giving a form grounding for understanding later chapters in the book.
We cover: Character mark-up including sub-scripts, superscripts, font size, text color and so on.
Paragraph mark-up including how to attach a style to a paragraph to give it a particular color or font and text flow around graphics.
Lists: bulleted lists, numbered lists, lists within lists roman lists.
Hypertext links including how jump to a particular place in a document rather than simply to the beginning, use of relative URLs, how to make a graphic "clickable", client and server-side imagemaps etc.
Tables, including design principles, merging tables cells, automatic alignment, fancy borders, and more.
Fill-out forms, including design principles and practices, syntax of latest forms widgets.
Maths equations, chemistry, special bracketing, matrices.
Style sheets including how to reference an external style sheet, how to apply local styles applicable to say, a single paragraph, and the various stylistic properties that can be associated with the various HTML elements.
Multimedia on the Web: how to insert images, video clips, JAVA applets and other applications into your document. This chapter includes discussion about the new OBJECT element which is likely to be the standard way to insert images and other media into HTML documents in the near future.
Graphics on the Web including a discussion of graphics formats and which are applicable under which circumstances: GIF, JPEG and PNG.
Appendices consisting of convenient reference material, an entertaining and informative glossary, a handy set of symbol definitions, and an aide-memoire with examples of common tags.
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