Index:

Headings
Headings are used to divide documents up into sections. Headings are
usually rendered in different font sizes by the browser.
Note
that a heading implies a paragraph break with the preceding and following
text. For example:
<H1>main titles</H1> are shown much
larger than <H2>subordinate headings</H2> in
most browsers.
This displays in a browser as:
main titles
are
shown much larger than
subordinate
headings
in
most browsers.
Lists
A list is made up of a few things:
-
A list constructor; which determines the kind of list to present.
For example,
<OL>, <UL> and <DL>
are
all list constructors. List constructors are tag pairs: one for the
start of the list, and a closing tag to signa the end of the list.
-
Several list items inside the list constructor.
The
nice thing about lists is that the browser takes care of all the indenting
and formatting.
Lists
come in several flavors:
Ordered
List <OL> <LI> . </OL>
Ordered lists are numbered in ascending order.
List items are started by the empty <LI>
tag. i.e.
there is no closing </LI>
tag, although it does not
hurt to put one in.
<OL>
<LI> One
<LI> Two
<LI> Three
</OL>
Displays as:
-
One
-
Two
-
Three
Unordered
List <UL> <LI> ... </UL>
Unnumbered lists are shown using bullets in place of numbers. The only
difference between an ordered list and the unordered list is the use
of <UL>... </UL>
in place of the <OL>
... </OL>
pair.
Lists can be nested simply by placing a list constructor where a list
item would normally go. For example, here we place a numbered list after
the first point in an unnumbered list.
<UL>
<LI> Top List.
<OL>
<LI> One
<LI> Two
</OL>
<LI> Bottom List
</UL>
Displays
as:
-
Top List
- One
-
Two
-
Bottom List
Descriptive
Lists <DL> <DT> <DD> </DL>
These are lists with two components. They do not use <LI>
tags, but instead use
<DT>
Descriptive Titles and <DD>
Descriptive Definition.
The <DT> title is the headword of the list. It is usually flush
with the margin, while the definition is indented. You can of course
have paragraph marks in a definition, just like in any other text, so
each definition can stretch on for a bit.
<DL>
<DT>Title
<DD>Generic Title <P>
<DT>Title 2
<DD>Generic Title Part TWO
</DL>
Note
the use of a <P> paragraph mark to separate the definitions.
Displays
as:
- Title
- Generic
Title.
-
-
-
Title
2
- Generic
Title Part TWO
URLs
URL: Universal Resource Locator.
URLs are the addresses of documents on the web. A full URL is made up
of three components:
-
A protocol (http, gopher or ftp)
-
A machine name (
www.gomasonry
)
-
A document path (
/search/search.html
)
These
are strung together like this:
protocol://machine.name/path/document
For example, this document resides on the www.gomasonry.com
machine, making the full URL to this document (as accessed by the Hypertext
protocol) this: http://www.gomasonry.com
Protocols
HTTP
The HyperText Transfer Protocol is the most common form
of protocol on the web. It is the one used to serve pages to the World
Wide Web.
Gopher
Gopher is the precursor to the web's HTTP protocol, and is often
used for providing pages for university information systems.
FTP
The trusty old
File Transfer Protocol is very similar to HTTP but is much
more resource intensive - you may find that accessing FTP links takes
much longer than HTTP links. FTP is the protocol you use to transfer
files back and forth from web sites on the web.
A link
is a reference from one document to another. A link involves an anchor
and a target. An anchor looks like this:
<A>some text</A>
An anchor marks a section of text. For an anchor to be useful, it takes
a parameter specifying what the marked text is related to. The target
of a link is specified using the option HREF
and a URL
to name the target. HREF means hypertext reference.
Important You cannot nest anchors like this: <A> test1
<A> test2</A> test3</A>. That is not permitted and
will not be understood by browsers!
The basic form is: <A HREF="url">the text in the link</A>
That will highlight the text in the link and point it to the
URL inside the quotes after HREF.
This is a <A HREF="http://www.gomasonry.com">test
of links</A> in documents.
Displays as:
This
is a test of links in documents.
Note that you can put any document at the end of a link, not just HTML
documents. This an example of a link to a picture:
This is a <A HREF="http://www.gomasonry.com/images/globe2.gif">
picture of a Globe</A> in a separate file.
Displays as:
This
is a picture of a
Globe in a separate file.