Creating Web Documents

HTML is the language behind a World Wide Web page. It is much less complex that it sounds! It stands for HyperText Markup Language; HTML is the type of documents a Web browser can interpret to display its various documents. The documents themselves are plain text files (ASCII) with special "tags" or codes that a Web browser knows how to interpret and display on your screen.

What is this document?

This page is not meant to be a complete guide to HTML. However, we encourage you to take a look at our tutorial, Writing HTML, designed to help faculty create lessons that access the Internet via the World Wide Web. See also the MCLI HTML resource list.

Why Create HTML files?

To create documents for your own WWW server- for example using Webstar software, you can set up a server on just about any Macintosh computer. In fact, our server once ran humbly on a Macintosh SE/30.
Are you already running a Gopher server? You can put HTML documents on a Gopher server; just make sure the URL you publicize points to is a Gopher type. For example, a sample HTML document resides on our Gopher Server.
Don't want to maintain a server? Just create HTML documents and then use the Open File... command from the File menu to read in the document you have created- it will look and function just like any other Web Page out there on the Internet. See below.
Have your Web browser program default to connect to a local HTML file on your computer- This way you will not have to wait for it to connect a busy server, and you can customize your initial entrance into the World Wide Web... Make your very own Home Page!

What do I need?

Any plain text editor- TeachText for the Macintosh, the Windows NotePad, i.e. any application that can save files as plain text.
A World Wide Web broswer such as NetScape, NCSA Mosaic, etc- It is not needed to create HTML files, but helps to test the appearance and functionality of the documents as you create them (more details down the page!)

Okay! How do I do it?

It may be easier to start with a sample document. You can modify its various features before venturing out on your own.

Here are the basic steps:

Launch your WWW browser application.
In another window open an existing HTML document or open a new window with your favorite plain text editor.
Modify or create the new text in accordance to the rules for HTML format. Refer to one of the references listed above for more details.
In the text editor, be sure to save the changes.
Go back to the WWW browser application, and select Open... from the File menu. Fish around in the dialog boxes until you can find the document you just saved in the previous step.
Voila! You should now see the document in Mosaic format
If it's not perfect, go back to the text editor and make appropriate changes (and remember to SAVE).
Go back to the WWW browser application. To update the changes, select Reload from:
- the File menu [for NCSA Mosaic 1.0.3, MacWeb]
- the Navigate menu [NCSA Mosaic 2.x]
- the View menu [NetScape]
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Experiment.

Once again, another plug for our tutorial, Writing HTML.

Creating Web Documents

Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI)
Maricopa County Community College District

The Internet Connection at MCLI is Alan Levine --}
Comments to levine@maricopa.edu

URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/HTMLcreate.html