Lesson 1

Hi Folks

well are you ready for Lesson 1 ?

Ready or not here we go.

First off I just want you to understand what HTML is all about !


HTML is the language of web pages.

In order to truly understand HTML, you need to know a little about browsers, and in order to understand browsers, you really need to know a little about how the web works.

Let's Start At The Beginning...
The World Wide Web is a huge collection of computers which are linked together in a network.

When I say that they're linked together, I don't necessarily mean physically. What I mean is that they can communicate with each other. They do this by sending data to each other.

Data is INFORMATION. That's all it is. Don't let the technical words scare you off. I won't be using too many.

Data, or information, is stored on every computer on the internet, and takes many forms. Spreadsheets are a form of data, as are Word documents, images, sound bites, and web pages.

Now, you may have noticed that on your computer, when you want to open a document, you sometimes need to use a specific program to do that. If you want to look at a JPEG image, you open it in Photoshop. If you want to view a file that ends in .DOC, you'll use Microsoft Word.

The reason for that is that inside of a file, things are written very strangely. Files are usually encoded, and depending on the type of file, they use different codes. The application you open a file with, needs to understand the code it was written with. If I want to communicate with a German, I find someone who can speak German to translate for me. If I asked someone who knew italian, but had no knowledge of German, I would be out of luck. The German would speak and the Italian translator would just shrug.

Web pages are encoded in their own special way too. The encoding process isn't difficult, and is usually done by hand. The way pages are encoded is with a MARK-UP language we call HTML. Remember that web pages are usually used as a means of conveying data, or information. The data is your message. This is the meat of the HTML document. Text and content are most important.

Once you have created a web page, you store it on a certain type of computer called a web server. Web servers are computers which are attached to the Internet, and do basically two things. A web server stores information documents and sends those documents to any other computer which requests them.

What's Really Going on?

Here's what really happens when you surf the web...

you attach to the Internet with a special type of computer program known as a browser. The first thing the browser wants to know is where to go. You type in an url.

An url is an address. This address tells the browser exactly where to find the page you're looking for.

What happens next is that your browser writes a quick message to the computer at that address requesting the page you want. In less than a second, the request has been delivered. The computer which has received the request (The Web Server, remember?) grabs the data for the requested page, and shoots it back to the requesting computer.

"Hey, send me such and such page"
"okay, Here ya go!"

Cue The Browser
So now, you have the data for that web page on your computer, but it's slightly encrypted, remember?

The browser takes all that raw data, and translates it. Then displays it on your screen. what the browser sees is raw data, which might look like this:

 
<img src="http://www.yourdomain.com/logo.gif">     

But what you see is the browsers interpretation of that data.

 

You see, HTML is simply a way for you to tell your visitor's browser how you want it to display your data.

Writing HTML is probably a little easier than you might think, and in the next lesson, you'll get a chance to make your own webpage!

Over the next few days we can Practice making pages rite here at adland Pro.

Dont worry i will guide you all the way !

If It makes things easier folks add me to your Yahoo,GMail or MSN my username is the same for all  (greenitems)


(please feel free to post questions that you would like to have answered over the course of the next  lessons and I will try to answer them each as the lessons unfold. Please don't expect me to jump all over this topic and answer everyone's questions one at a time as they are posted.... rather post your question... keep up with the lessons and by the end the lesson you will have all your questions answered.) I will not move on to the next lesson until all the questions have been answered.

Thank You for your Co-Operation

Just to help out a bit if you want to Join this FREE site It will help you practice what we learn here.



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Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Lesson 6



Daniel

Thanks, Daniel!

This is a lot of information and for me, it is a lot to learn.  I will keep rereading until I get it!!  You are so kind to put these lessons together.  I know they must be quite time consuming!!

Thanks a bunch!

Judy

Hi Judy

Yes they are time consuming but thats Ok...Many people here at adland pro wanted this so why not help them out.

Daniel

In this lesson I just want everybody to understand what HTML is and why It is used.

If anybody has any questions so far post them and I will answer them before we go to Lesson 2.

In lesson 2 we will practice some basic HTML and get to play with it. I will set it up so that we can either use our Web Page here at Adand pro or you can use a note pad at home and practice that way !

Or both !

We can also use our signature block to practice !

That will be helpful to many that are having problems making nice looking Signatures.



We are going to go very slow here..Some people know some HTML but other do not know anything about it.

So to be fair with everybody I will teach this as if nobody knows anything about HTML.

Even if you do know HTML well I am sure you will get something out of this.



Thanks

Daniel

Thanks, Daniel! So far, so good!I believe I understand.I am keeping all this in a special file for my own reference later, if I should need it!