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1. Introduction and Home Page

This HTML document collection explains how to write good HTML documents and how to correctly use the different HTML document description elements, or tags. Comments, corrections and suggestions are encouraged and should be sent to igraham@utirc.utoronto.ca.

For more information about UTIRC (where I work) why not visit the UTIRC home page???.

Contents of this Page:
[ Features ] [Navigation?] [Organization?] [Web/HTML Dev. Tools] [HTTP Servers]

A Book on HTML, HTTP and the CGI Interface

The essence of these hypertext documents (plus much more) will soon be available in book form. The title is The HTML Sourcebook , published by John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-471-11846-4. It will be available in early to mid-March. It is shipping from the warehouses as of March 3!!

1.1 Features Of This Documents Collection

Guidelines for writing good HTML
Descriptions of all the elements in HTML and guides to their use, with examples.
Changes for HTML3.0 (formerly HTML+)
Information on changes expected in the migration to the new markup language definition, HTML3.0. This is unfortunately not complete, but the Bibliography has a pointer to the HTML3.0 discussion document.
Server Scripts
Discussion of the important server-side aspects, such as executing cgi-bin scripts, using forms, etc.
Bibliography
A list of URLs pointing to other information resources related to HTML, HTTP, URLs, CGI and the World Wide Web.

1.2 Web and HTML Development Tools

Tools useful for creating and viewing HTML documents, and those related to HTTPD servers and server-side scripts are found in the related documents: We also have an ftp archive site, that contains some of this material archived as tar files, or converted into Postscript. The ftp archive site is at ftp.utirc.utoronto.ca.

1.3 How to Navigate these Documents

The Index allows you to jump to documents through the document Index. The navigation anchors at the top of each page work as follows:
  • [Index] go to the Index
  • [Up] go up one level (for example 3.4 to 3)
  • [Back] go back one page (for example 3.2 to 3.1)
  • [Next] go forward one page (for example 3.2 to 3.3)

    • 1.4 Organizational Outline

    This document is organized into 9 main Sections.
    Section 1
    What you are reading right now -- a brief introduction to the layout of these documents.
    Section 2
    An introduction to HTML, describing the naming scheme for HTML document formatting instructions (`elements'), the basic structure of an HTML document and standard naming schemes for files accessed as (or by) HTML documents.
    Section 3
    A description of the HEAD part of an HTML document, and of the HTML `elements' valid in the HEAD.
    Section 4
    A description of the BODY part of an HTML document - the BODY contains the part of the document actually displayed by the `browser' - and of the HTML `elements' valid in the BODY.
    Section 5
    A description of URLs - Uniform Resource Locators. This is the mechanism by which documents are referenced via HTML hypertext links.
    Section 6
    Interaction with the Server. It is possible for a browser to send information back to a hypertext document server for interpretation by special server-side programs or scripts. This section describes how this mechanism works, and gives several examples.
    Section 7
    Miscellaneous things that didn't seem to fit elsewhere. For example the section shows how to put a comment line in an HTML document.
    Section 8
    This is a pointer to the CERN HTML+ definition document, for those interested in more details on HTML+.
    Bibliography
    A list of important documents about HTML and HTML+. This list also references information about HTML editors and document translators, as well as information regarding different HTML servers.

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