You can preview documents in progress with NCSA Mosaic (and some other WWW browers). Open the document using the Open Local option under the File menu. Use the Filters, Directories, and Files fields to locate the document or enter the path and name of the document in the Name of Local Document to Open field. Press OK. If you see edits you want to make, enter them in the source file. Save the changes. Return to NCSA Mosaic and press the Reload button on the bottom menu. The edits are reflected in the on-screen display.
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<TITLE>The simplest HTML example</TITLE> <H1>This is a level one heading</H1> Welcome to the world of HTML. This is one paragraph.<P> And this is a second.<P>____________________________________________________________________
Click here to see the formatted version of the example.
HTML uses tags to tell the World Web viewer how to display the text. The above example uses
<TITLE>
tag (which
has a correspondinging </TITLE>
tag), which specifies
the title of the document,
<H1>
header tag
(with corresponding </H1>
), and
<P>
end-of-paragraph tag.
<
), known
as a ``less than'' symbol to mathematicians, followed by some text
(called the directive) and closed
by a right angular bracket (>
).
Tags are usually paired, e.g. <H1>
and </H1>
.
The ending tag looks just like the starting tag except
a slash (/) precedes the text within the brackets.
In the example, <H1>
tells the viewer to
start formatting a top level heading;
</H1>
tells the viewer that the heading is complete.
The primary exception to the pairing rule is the <P>
end-of-paragraph tag. There is no such thing as </P>
.
Note: HTML is not case senstive.
<title>
is completely equivalent
to <TITLE>
or <TiTlE>
.
Not all tags are supported by all World Wide Web browsers. If a browser does not support a tag, it should just ignore it, though.
Titles
Every HTML document should have a title. A title is generally
displayed separately from
the document and is used primarily for document identification in other
contexts (e.g., a WAIS search). Choose about half a dozen
words that describe the document's purpose.
In NCSA Mosaic, the Document Title field is at the top of the screen just below the pulldown menus.The directive for the title tag is
<title>
.
The title generally goes on the first line of the document.
Headings
HTML has six
levels of headings (numbered 1 through 6), with 1 being the most prominent.
Headings are displayed in larger and/or bolder fonts than the normal
body text. The first heading in each document should be tagged
<H1>
.
The syntax of the heading tag is:
<Hy>Text of heading</Hy>where y is a number between 1 and 6 specifying the level of the heading.
For example, the coding for the ``Headings'' section heading above is
<H3>Headings</H3>Title versus first heading: In many documents (including this one), the first heading is identical to the title. For multi-part documents, the text of the first heading should be suitable for a reader who is already browsing related information (e.g., a chapter title), while the title tag should identify the node in a wider context (e.g., include both the book title and the chapter title).
Paragraphs
Unlike documents in most word processors,
carriage returns and white space in HTML files aren't significant.
Word wrapping can occur at any point in your source file, and multiple
spaces are collapsed into a single space (except in
the <TITLE> field). Notice that in the barebones example,
the first paragraph is coded as
Welcome to HTML. This is the first paragraph. <P>In the source file, there is a line break between the sentences. A Web browser ignores this line break and starts a new paragraph only when it reaches a
<P>
tag.
Important:
You must end each paragraph with <P>
. The viewer
ignores any indentations or blank lines in the source text. Without
the <P>
tags, the document becomes one large paragraph. HTML
relies almost entirely on the tags for formatting instructions. (The
exception is text tagged as ``preformatted,'' explained
below.) For instance, the following
would produce identical output as the first barebones HTML example:
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<TITLE>The simplest HTML example</TITLE><H1>This is a level one heading</H1>Welcome to the world of HTML. This is one paragraph.<P>And this is a second.<P>________________________________________________________________________
However, to preserve readability in HTML files, headings should be on separate lines, and paragraphs should be separated by blank lines.
Linking to other documents
The chief power of HTML comes from its ability to link regions
of text (and also images) to another document (or an image).
These regions are typically
highlighted by the browser to indicate that they are hypertext links.
In NCSA Mosaic, hypertext links are in color and underlined by default. It is possible to modify this in the Options menu as well as in your .Xdefaults file.HTML's single hypertext-related directive is
A
,
which stands for anchor. To include anchors in your document:
<a
href="filename.html"
followed by a
closing angle bracket: >
</A>
<a href="MaineStats.html">Maine</a>This entry makes ``Maine'' the hyperlink to the document MaineStats.html.
Uniform Resource Locator
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) refers to the format used by WWW
documents to locate other files. A URL gives the type of resource being
accessed (e.g., gopher, WAIS) and the path of the file. The format used is:
scheme://host.domain[:port]/path/filenamewhere scheme is one of:
file
http
gopher
WAIS
news
or telnet
, but these
are used much less often than the above.
The port number can generally be omitted from the URL. For example if you wanted to insert a link to this primer, you would insert
<A HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html"> NCSA's HTML Primer</A>into your document. This would make the text ``NCSA's HTML Primer'' a hyperlink leading to this document.
Refer to the Addressing document prepared by CERN for additional information about URLs. A Beginner's Guide to URLs is located on the NCSA Mosaic Help menu.
Anchors to Specific Sections in Other Documents
Anchors can also be used to move to a particular section in
a document.
Suppose you wish to set a link from document A and a specific
section in document B. First you need to set up what is called
a named anchor in document B. For example, to add an
anchor named ``Jabberwocky" to document B, you would insert
Here's <A NAME="Jabberwocky">some text</a>.Now when you create the link in document A, you include not only the filename, but also the named anchor, separated by a hash mark(``#''):
This is my <A HREF="documentB.html#Jabberwocky">link</a>.Now clicking on the word ``link'' in document A would send the reader directly to the words ``some text'' in document B.
Note: The NCSA Mosaic Back button does not work for an anchor within a document because the Back button is designed to move to a previous document. Move back manually within the document using the scroll bar. (The Back button will return to the start of a hyperlink effective with Version 2.0 of NCSA Mosaic.)
Additional markup tags
The above is sufficient to produce simple HTML documents. For more
complex documents, HTML also has tags for several types of lists,
extended quotes, character formatting and other items, all described
below.
Lists
HTML supports unnumbered, numbered, and descriptive lists.
For list items, no
paragraph separator is required. The tags for the items in the list
terminate each list item.
Unnumbered Lists
<ul>
tag.
<li>
tag followed by the
individual item. (Remember that no closing tag is needed.)
</ul>
tag.
<UL> <LI> apples <LI> bananas </UL>The output is:
Note that different viewers display an unordered list differently. A viewer might use bullets, filled circles, or dashes to show the items.
Numbered Lists
A numbered list (also called an ordered list, from where the
abbreviation comes) uses the <ol>
directive to start a list
rather than the <ul>
directive. The items are
tagged using the same <li>
tag as for a bulleted list.
For example:
<OL> <LI> oranges <LI> peaches <LI> grapes </OL>The list looks like this online:
Descriptive Lists
A description list usually consists of alternating a description
title (abbreviated as dt) and a description description
(abbreviated
as dd). The description generally starts on a new line, because the viewer
allows the full line width for the contents of the dt field.
Below is an example description list as included in your source file:
<DL> <DT> National Center for Supercomputing Applications <DD> NCSA is located on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. NCSA is a one of four member institutions in the National Metacenter for Computational Science and Engineering. <DT> Cornell Theory Center <DD> CTC is located on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. CTC is another member of the National Metacenter for Computational Science and Engineering. </DL>The output looks like this:
<DT>
and <DD>
entries can contain multiple
paragraphs (separated by paragraph tags), lists, or other description
information.
Nested Lists
Lists can be arbitrarily nested. A list item can itself contain
lists. You can also have a number of paragraphs, each themselves containing
nested lists, in a single list item, and so on.
Remember that the display of an unordered list varies with the viewer. A browser may not provide successive levels of indentation or modify the bullets used at each level.
NCSA Mosaic indents the second level in the following list and changes the ``bullet'' from a bullet to a small box.An example nested list:
<UL> <LI> A few New England states: <UL> <LI> Vermont <LI> New Hampshire </UL> <li> One Midwestern state: <UL> <LI> Michigan </UL> </UL>The nested list is displayed as
pre
tag (which stands for ``preformatted'')
to include text in a fixed-width font and to cause
spaces, new lines, and tabs to be significant. This is
useful for program
listings. For
example, the following lines in your source file:
<PRE> #!/bin/csh cd $SCR cfs get mysrc.f:mycfsdir/mysrc.f cfs get myinfile:mycfsdir/myinfile fc -02 -o mya.out mysrc.f mya.out cfs save myoutfile:mycfsdir/myoutfile rm * </PRE>display as:
#!/bin/csh cd $SCR cfs get mysrc.f:mycfsdir/mysrc.f cfs get myinfile:mycfsdir/myinfile fc -02 -o mya.out mysrc.f mya.out cfs save myoutfile:mycfsdir/myoutfile rm *Hypertext references (and other HTML tags) can be used within <pre> sections.
<blockquote>
and </blockquote>
tags to include
quotations in a separate block on the screen. For example
<blockquote> Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow. <P> I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. <P> I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. <P> </blockquote>The result is
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow.I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
<ADDRESS>
tag is generally used
within HTML documents to specify
the author of a document and provides a means of contacting the author (e.g.,
an email address). This is usually the last item in a file and generally
starts on a new, left-justified line. For example, the last part of the HTML file for this primer is
<ADDRESS> A Beginner's Guide to HTML / NCSA / pubs@ncsa.uiuc.edu </ADDRESS>The result is:
A Beginner's Guide to HTML / NCSA / pubs@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Character formatting
Individual words or sentences can be put in special styles.
Logical styles are
those that are configured by your viewer. For example,
<CITE>
may be defined as italic by your viewer. Each time you enter
<CITE>
tags, the viewer automatically displays the text in italics.
A physical style
is one that you determine, and the viewer displays
what you have coded. For example
<I>
tells the viewer to
display your text in italics.
For HTML-coded documents, you should use logical styles whenever possible. Future implementations of HTML may not implement physical styles at all.
<I>text</i>
puts text in italics
(HTML Primer)
<em>text</em>
also italicizes text (only one viewer)
<cite>text</cite>
is used for citations of names
of manuals, sections, or books (HTML Primer)
<var>text</var>
indicates a
variable (filename)
<b>text</b>
puts text in bold
(Important)
<strong>text</strong>
also emphasizes
text (Note:)
<tt>text</tt>
puts text in a fixed-width
font (1 SU = 1 CPU hour)
<code>text</code>
also puts text in
a fixed-width font (1 SU = 1 CPU hour
)
<samp>text</samp>
formats text for samples
(-la)
<kbd>text</kbd>
displays the names of
keys on the keyboard (HELP)
<dfn>text</dfn>
displays a definition in italics
<
), right
angle bracket (>
), and ampersand (&
). The angle brackets are used to specify HTML tags (as shown above), while the ampersand is used as the escape mechanism for these and other characters:
<
is the escape sequence for
<
>
is the escape sequence for
>
&
is the escape sequence for
&
There are additional escape sequences, such as a whole set of sequences to support 8-bit character sets (ISO 8859-1). For example:
ö
is the escape sequence for
a lowercase o
with an umlaut: ö
ñ
is the escape sequence for
a lowercase n
with an tilde: ñ
È
is the escape sequence for
an uppercase E
with a grave mark: È
Inline Images
NCSA Mosaic is can display X Bitmap (XBM) or GIF format images inside
documents. Each image
takes time to process and slows down the initial display of the
document. Using a particular image multiple times in a document
causes very little performance degradation compared to using the image only once.
NOTE: The <img>
tag is an HTML extension
first implemented in NCSA Mosaic. Currently it is not
understood by most other World
Wide Web browsers.
To include an inline image in your document, enter:
<IMG SRC="filename.GIF">
By default the bottom of an image is aligned with the text as shown in this paragraph.
Include the align=top
parameter if you want the viewer
to align adjacent text with the top of the
image as shown in this paragraph. The full inline image
tag with the top alignment is:
<IMG ALIGN=top SRC="filename.GIF">
If you have a larger image
(i.e., one that fills most of your screen),
you should insert an end of paragraph tag (<p>
) before
inserting the image parameter. End with another paragraph tag.
(Or you might want to have the
image open a new window, which is explained below.)
To include a reference to a graphic in an external document, use
<A HREF = "filename.gif">link anchor</A>
Make certain the image
is in GIF, TIFF, JPEG, RGB, or HDF format.
Troubleshooting
<h1>This is <a name="foo">invalid HTML.</h1></a>Because many current HTML parsers aren't very good at handling invalid HTML, avoid overlapping constructs.
<img>
tag points at
an image that does not
exist or cannot be otherwise obtained from whatever server
is supposed to be serving it, the NCSA logo is substituted.
For example, entering <img href="DoesNotExist.gif">
(where
"DoesNotExist.gif" is a nonexistant file) causes the following to
be displayed: If this happens to you, first make sure that the referenced image does in fact exist and that the hyperlink has the correct information in the link entry. Next verify that the file permission is set appropriately (world-readable).
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<TITLE>A Longer Example</TITLE> <H1>A Longer Example</H1> This is a simple HTML document. This is the first paragraph. <P> This is the second paragraph, which shows special effects. This is a word in <I>italics</I>. This is a word in <B>bold</B>. Here is an inlined GIF image: <IMG SRC="myimage.gif">. <p> This is the third paragraph, which demonstrates links. Here is a hypertext link from the word <A HREF="subdir/myfile.html">foo</A> to a document called "subdir/myfile.html". (If you try to follow this link, you will get an error screen.) <P> <H2>A second-level header</H2> Here is a section of text that should display as a fixed-width font: <P> <PRE> On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain ... </PRE> This is a unordered list with two items: <P> <UL> <LI> cranberries <LI> blueberries </UL> This is the end of my example document. <P> <address>Me (me@mycomputer.univ.edu)</address>