Lesson 13
Alphabet Soup
IntroductionSome might think that this lesson should occur much earlier, but I do not think that you would be ready for it. Much of this is for information only. You do not need to learn it yet, but I hope that it helps to put the initials that you do need in context.
W3C
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the organisation that specifies how web designers write their pages. Visit their web site.
html
Hypertext mark-up language is the original language used to write web pages. It existed in various versions up to version 4.01. until it metamorphosed into xhtml!
xhtml
extensible hyper-text mark-up language is the successor to html. Conforming to the rules of xml (see well down this page), it is included in earlier lessons.
css
Cascading Style Sheets. A way of standardising the style of a whole website.
Java Script
This language is a way of adding bells and whistles to a web site. It is worth learning!
dhtml
Dynamic hyper-text mark-up language is a way of describing the mixture of mark-up technologies which produce the modern interactive web pages. It includes xhtml, css and Javascript. Now called AJAX.
More on DTDs for html and xhtml
DTDs for html 4.01 and xhtml 1.0 each exist in three forms. They are the strict, the transitional and the frameset. The appropriate DTD should appear as the first line on every web page.
html DTDs
| strict | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" http://www.w3c.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> |
| transitional | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3c.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> |
| frameset | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3c.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd"> |
xhtml DTDs
| strict | <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> |
| transitional | <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> |
| frameset | <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd"> |
More on xhtml
The opening tag of an xhtml document (after the DTD) should be:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
sgml
Standard generalised mark-up language is the theoretical top-level in mark-up languages. xml
Extensible mark-up language is a way of making up your own mark-up language. It is defined in a DTD.
DTD
Document type definitions allow you to make up your own xml.
xsl
extensible style language allows you to style an xml.
Previous Lesson  |
 Next Lesson |
