Part 2 of the course is the real introduction to the subject with an introduction to the basics of HTML and standards around them - the web design environment. This is boring but important as one has to start somewhere. It is a useful introduction for beginners. The bulk of the reading is around definitions and language: the rules and tools of web design. The four page study states the goal of the week as "to put the design and development of web applications in to some sort of context."

One is introduced to a very brief history of the web with accessibility and internationalisation, and the W3C responsible for HTML standards and HTML 4.01. The key areas are the use of document type definition (loose, tight and framesets), elements and attributes. HTML is introduced as being based on SGML, however with the introduction of a brand new mark up language in XML, XHTML, as an application of XML, is then described as the future for HTML. Coverage of HTML includes hypertext as a non-linear way of organising information and hypermedia for linking different types of media. Structuring of the HTML is covered with the HTML (document) tag, HEAD for the heading data, TITLE and BODY tags.

The key issues around formatting standards for HTML are its use for structuring documents, hence the deprecated (obselete) elements and proprietary elements (only work within the browser for which they were designed). and CSS for creating style rules. A number of deprecated elements are covered - these are lists (L) (ordered and undordered), font style (FONT) (e.g. font face and color) and headings (H). Other tags also covered are the use of P for paragraphs and BR for breaks.

Finally, there is a brief introduction to HTML editors (wysiwyg and non-), the importance of designing for different screen resolutions (800 x 600 is the optimum) and browsers (with the role of the parsing program for interpreting mark up tags.)

This report is free to copy. Permission is given for non-commercial use without modification, amendment or any other form of change. Full acknowledgement must be given to Simon Crossley.