Chapter 1. What Is a Markup Language?
IN THIS CHAPTER
What Are We Doing Here?
Understanding Hypertext
Understanding Markup Instructions
Understanding Markup Language
The World Wide Web is a technology beast. If you have read this book's introduction, you should have at least a passing familiarity with how the Web started—its humble beginnings to bring cross-referenced textual documents to the masses via the connectivity of the Internet.
You are reading this book, so it's a good assumption that you are familiar with what the Web has become today—a collection of technologies capable of transporting numerous media across the Internet for consumption directly on your desktop.
However, it's important not to forget the Web's humble beginnings because the technologies used for the very first simple documents are still in use today, and must be understood. This chapter helps frame the reasons why.
What Are We Doing Here?
Why are we diving into technical topics instead of talking about how to create Web documents? Well, technically we are talking about how to create Web documents. The more you know about the technology behind the Web, the better prepared you will be to use the technology to your benefit, and the easier it will be to create Web documents.
Note
If you really do want to just dive into creating documents, check out Chapter 19, "Web Development Software," which covers tools you can use to quickly create documents without knowing the underlying technology behind it all. However, keep in ...
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