Study Guide: Web Design - Web Page

A web page contains information in the form of graphics and text. Sometimes a web page also contains animation, movies, sound, and interactive elements. Web pages exist on a computer called a web server that is connected to the Internet, and can be viewed by any other computer connected to the Internet with a web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Web pages also typically contain hyperlinks to other webpages.

The World Wide Web (WWW) consists of millions of web pages, with more being added all the time. These pages are on web servers all over the world, and can be linked to each other. Hypertext markup language (HTML) was developed in the 1980s and is used to create virtually all pages on the web today.

HTML is a simple computer language that allows information to be transmitted digitally and presented on many kinds of computers all over the world. A web browser interprets HTML commands and displays information contained in the web page.

In an HTML document, text is sandwiched between HTML commands called tags. The tags control the way the text is displayed by a web browser. The tags themselves do not appear when you view a web page. Tags are commands in between these pointy brackets: < >. One example of a tag is the <hr> tag. <hr> , or horizontal rule, simply makes line across a web page.

You can look at the source, the HTML code of any web page that you can view with a browser. Let's do that now!

Exercise: Look at the HTML source code for this page [wd-1.gif]

If you are using Netscape, simply click on the View menu, and click on View Source. Another window should appear with the HTML code for the page you were viewing. Look at this document. Can you see some text in the source code that you also see on the web page? Can you see some tags in the source that do not appear on the web page? Can you figure out what any of the tags do?