Univ of MD, College of Arts and Humaniites: Digital Technology in the Arts and Humanities

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WebSite Creation: Key Terms
http://www.arhu.umd.edu/technology/workshops/websitecreation/webkeyterms.html

Overview
Key Terms
Composer Notes
Course Materials on the Web with WebSpinner Notes
Dreamweaver Notes

World Wide Web
provides a means for accessing resources on the internet without requiring the user to know how these resources are transmitted and stored.Web uses the metaphor of a document with hypertext - text that can connect to other information such as another document, image, sound, video.

Hypertext
text that is not constrained to being linear; hypertext organizes information as an interconnected web of linked text. Hypertext enables the user to select words in the text to access additional related information or link to other related documents. Different paths can be followed through the work by different readers.

HTML- Hypertext Markup Language
A system for marking up documents with informational tags that indicate how text or various components of a document should be presented and how the documents are linked together. HTML documents are written as plain text files with codes that determine the appearance of the document when viewed through a World Wide Web browser such as Netscape or Mosaic.

HTML Syntax
HTML Documents have two parts:
1. Head: contains information about the document
2. Body: contains the text of the document

Mark up Tags
Mark up tags are used to define format to be used by Web Browsers when reading HTML documents. Most tags are used in pairs- the start tag and the end tag.
For example:
anything placed between and will appear in bold text when viewed through a be browser.
Some tags do not need an ending tag (also referred to as ìemptyî tags.)
Ending tags are not needed for the following example:
 brakes up text
<hr> inserts a horizontal rule
Note:
ï Carriage returns, tabs and other white space are ignored by the browser.
You must use the following tags to break up text:
 insert a blank line and start a new paragraph
 similar to a hard return with a word processor; no blank line but a break in text.
<hr> hard rule: separates text with a hard rule
ï HTML is not case sensitive except with providing addresses within a URL.
<title> is equivalent to <TITLE> or <TiTlE>

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
The standardized way in which any resource is identified within a Web document or to a web browser. Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) specify the location of files on other servers. A URL includes the type of resource being accessed (e.g., gopher, FTP, WAIS), the address of the server, and the location of the file. The syntax is:
scheme://host.domain[:port]/path/filename
where scheme is one of the following:
file: a file on your local system, or a file on an anonymous FTP server
http: a file on a World Wide Web server
gopher: a file on a Gopher server
WAIS: a file on a WAIS server
news: an Usenet newsgroup
telnet: connection to a Telnet-based service
rtsp: real time streaming ?

The port number can generally be omitted. (That means unless someone tells you otherwise, leave it out.)
Sample HTML Document
<html>
<head>
<title>
Usually, the title appears in the as the title of the display menu.
</title>
<body>
Text goes in the body, possibly with embedded HTML elements.
</body>
</html>

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Contact Information:

Catherine Hays Zabriskie
chays@deans.umd.edul
301-405-2886