Web Design 101: HTML and CSS

In order for a web site to be viewable in your web browser, it must be made up of HTML files. HTML stands for "Hypertext Markup Language." A web browser (like Internet Explorer), interprets the HTML into what you see in your browser screen. If you want to see an example of what HTML looks like, right-click your mouse in your browser window and click "View Page Source." You can see that the content of the web page is sectioned off in "tags", which are contained within the "<" and ">" characters. These tags tell the browser what to do with the content in order to display in the correct format.

One of the most notable features of HTML is the capability to create "hypertext." Hypertext is text that can be clicked to take the user to another web page or another part of the web page. Hypertext is used to create what we know of as "links"

In order to achieve some formatting that is not available in HTML, most web sites use CSS, or "Cascading Style Sheets." CSS provides a way for a designer to apply formatting styles to specific elements or to all elements in a web site of a specific type or "class."

CSS styles can be very useful for a designer since they are not contained within the HTML itself and therefore can be changed in a separate file without affecting the HTML file. This is very helpful if the designer needs to change all of the headings in the entire site to a different color. Using HTML alone, every page on the web site would need to be updated, while using CSS, only one line of code needs to be changed. CSS also provides many advantages in the way elements can be positioned on a web page.

Together, HTML and CSS are used to create much of the formatting we see when we browse the web.