HTML Manual of Style

Preface

During the past year a revolution has been happening over our world's telecommunications networks. It's called the World Wide Web, and its growth has been nothing less than phenomenal. Of course, no revolution comes out of nowhere, and so it is with the World Wide Web. Developments, both technological and social, have paved the way for the emergence of the Web. Computers, once confined only to those who could master the arcane mysteries of programming languages, are now part of the everyday world of businesspeople, artists, and schoolchildren. The Internet, a set of protocols that permitted universities and other large organizations to exchange data, has now become the hottest trend of the nineties. The World Wide Web ties the two together, breaking the physical barriers of Cyberspace to establish the foundation of a global electronic village.

The World Wide Web provides a means of accessing the resources of the Internet without requiring the user to know how those resources are transmitted and stored. The Web's hypermedia paradigm expands the potential of the Internet and empowers technical and nontechnical people alike with a simple, low-cost method of providing information, opinions, and art to a world-wide audience of millions. This book is about harnessing that power. It is a "lean and mean" instructional guide to HTML, the HyperText Markup Language that is the lingua franca of the Web. In this slim volume lies the means by which you can join the revolution, not as just a passive consumer of information, but as a publisher of information.

This book is primarily for those who are already exploring the Web with programs such as Lynx and Mosaic and who now wish to put their own information out there for others to utilize. Don't fret if you're not there yet. These programs are available for most computer platforms and, in most cases, are free. Getting an Internet connection used to be rather difficult. Now, however, on the same bookshelf where this book can be found, you will find all-in-one kits that will get you connected to the Internet and surfing the Web in a matter of hours. HTML is very easy to learn. You do not need any prior experience with programming languages: A familiarity with any modern word processing program will suffice. Since the World Wide Web encompasses most of the other protocols of the Internet, some knowledge of basic Internet procedures, such as e-mail, ftp, gopher, and newsgroups, will be helpful; however, such knowledge is not required to understand how the Web works and how to publish information on it.

This book consists of four chapters and three appendixes. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to HTML, the basic concepts of hypertext and hypermedia, the World Wide Web, and the Internet. Chapter 2 explains the structure and syntax of HTML and covers the details of the various elements of the language. Chapter 3 provides a discussion of proper HTML style and shows how to build good hypertext documents. Chapter 4 is a collection of World Wide Web pages and the complete HTML sources that generate them. Appendix A provides a quick reference to HTML; Appendix B shows a preview of the next generation of the language HTML+; and Appendix C is a resource guide.

This book was created and edited on an ancient (six-year-old) Apple Macintosh II computer and a more recent Macintosh PowerBook 160 using Microsoft Word version 5.1. Manuscript pages were printed on an Apple Personal LaserWriter NTR printer. For research, I used several World Wide Web browsersÑNCSA Mosaic (versions 1.0.3 and 2.0A8), MacWeb (version 1.00A2.2), Netscape (version 0.9b), and Enhanced NCSA Mosaic (version 1.01). My connection to the Internet is via a dialup PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) link to Panix, a local Internet service provider, using a Zoom Technologies V.32bis modem.

This is my first book. I welcome your comments, suggestions and criticism. Please send them to me via e-mail to: laronson@acm.org.

Thanks, and enjoy.

Larry Aronson
New York City