The World Wide Web

Exploring the World-Wide-Web
Hypertext Markup Language

Creating web documents with Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) may sound high-tech, but actually anyone who can use word processing software can learn to put together simple HTML pages. One of the reasons for the fantastic popularity of the World-Wide Web is that it allows individuals and organizations to publish and distribute their information far more cheaply and easily than conventional printing technologies.

"Exploring the World-Wide Web" is not an HTML tutorial, but there are many good ones available, including Case Western Reserve University's Introduction to HTML (http://www.cwru.edu/help/introHTML/index.html).

For an overview of web site design, a good place to start is the WWW Style Guide at the Yale School of Medicine's Center for Advance Instructional Media (http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/StyleManual_Top.HTML). This guide will help you design a web site and web pages that are easy to use and that communicate clearly. A similar and equally valuable resource is Sun Microsystem's Guide to Web Style. The Bandwidth Conservation Society (http://www.csn.net/way/faster/) provides advice on how to prepare bandwidth-efficient web graphics with Photoshop and other image-editing programs.

For more detailed information about HTML, here are some other resources:

• A Beginner's Guide to HTML (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/html-primer.html)
• HTML Quick Reference (http://kuhttp.cc.ukans.edu/lynx_help/HTML_quick.html)
• HyperText Markup Language (HTML) (http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html)
• IETF - HyperText Markup Language (HTML) Working Group (http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/html/)