Chances are (after all you are reading this) you have 'surfed the web' and have seen a variety of websites. You see flashing advertisements, various logos, text, forms to fill out the buy things. If you intend to have your own website, it is helpful that you understand a little about what is going on 'under the hood'.
When you click the little blue "E" icon on your Winows computer you are starting a program called Internet Exporer. This is the program that lets you view web pages. You could be using another program called "Netscape" or Firefox or "Opera". There are others. If you use an Apple computer you may be using xxx or xxx. There is a general name for any program that lets you view web pages -- a Browser.
While most people use Internet Explorer on their Windows computer, other browsers may be a better choice. Internet Explorer is so popular because it comes with your computer. However is has problems that help viruses and other bad things to end up on your computer. If you are interested, we'd be glad to talk with you about the pros and cons of each these browsers, and help you decide which is best for you.
Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is the company you pay to get access to the Internet. It could be your cable company, or AOL or some other company that provides you with the phone number you need to connect to the internet.
If you have your own web site you need a "Host" company. The host has a very high speed connnection to the internet. They have computers that hold your webpages and send them to computers of the people who are using a browser to look at your website. Hosts do this by running a program called a Web Server on their computer.
When you click on a link on a website, or when you type http://www.somecompany.com in the address bar of your browser, you are sending a command to a host computer running a webserver. That webserver sends the webpage to your browser where it is displayed.
The web page that is sent is a text file that contains all the the text, titles and descriptions that appear in your browser. It also contains what is called "markup" commands that tell the browser that this bit of text is a title, this other bit is a paragraph. Yet another piece of text tells the browser about a picture goes in this place on the page.
The 'mark-up' described above is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The purpose of HTML is to include in your webpage information about the structure of the page. It basically labels each portion of your page content. This labeling is helpful for the Browser to display your page.
The 'mark-up' described above is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The purpose of HTML is to include in your webpage information about the structure of the page. It basically labels each portion of your page content. This labeling is helpful for the Browser to display your page.
While HTML describes the content of your page, a second kind of file called a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) lists the HTML elements on your web page and describes how they should look. For instance, it might say that Title text should be large and in red. Paragraph text should be normal size and in black. Links to other web pages should be purple and underlined. It can also proscribe where different parts of your web page should be displayed -- menu items along the top, or maybe along the left side.
CityDesk content management system
HTML, XHTML
CSS,
Javascript
PHP or ASP Server side scripting
W3C CSS and HTML Markup validation