HTML The Definitive Guide (3 page)

Preface

Is HTML 4.0 Really a Big Deal?

For about two years around 1996, if anyone mentioned HTML standards to us, we responded with a groan, a bemused smile, and then uproarious laughter. Standards had become a joke. Today, fortunately for those of us who appreciate standards, it's different. HTML 4.0 marks a new beginning.

For a time, standards had become a pawn in the browser "wars" between Netscape Communications, Inc. and Microsoft Corp. After release of HTML 2.0, the elders of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) responsible for such language-standards matters lost control. The abortive HTML+ standard never got off the ground, and HTML 3.0 became so bogged down in debate that the W3C simply shelved the entire draft standard. HTML 3.0 never happened, despite what some opportunistic marketers claim in their literature.

Instead, many new innovations in the language appeared as browser-specific extensions with frequently conflicting implementations. Most web analysts agree that Netscape's quick success in becoming the browser of choice for an overwhelming majority of users can be attributed directly to the company's implementation of useful and exciting additions to HTML. Today, all other browser manufacturers - in particular, the behemoth Microsoft Corp., which appreciates the meaning of "de facto standard" better than anyone in the business - have to implement Netscape's HTML extensions if they expect to have any chance of competing in the web browser marketplace. By pushing the W3C to officially release HTML standard version 3.2 in late 1996, which for all intents and purposes standardized most of Netscape's language extensions, the other browser manufacturers gained legitimacy for their products without having to acknowledge the leading competitor.

Fortunately for those of us who appreciate and strongly support standards, the W3C has taken back the initiative with HTML 4.0. The standard is clearer and cleaner than any previous one, establishes solid implementation models for consistency across browsers and platforms, provides strong supports and incentives for the companion Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standard for HTML-based displays, and makes provisions for alternative (nonvisual) user-agents, as well as for more universal language supports. Don't be overly fooled, though. Many of the new standards are Microsoft inventions, implemented in Internet Explorer 4. It was in their corporate interest to re-establish W3C's dominance and to influence that standards body, rather than letting the browser industry at large decide standards, as they did with HTML 3.2. (In today's computing game, there's Microsoft and then there's everybody else.)

The paradox is that the HTML 4.0 standard is not the definitive resource. There are many more features of the language in popular use by both Netscape and/or Internet Explorer than are included in this latest language standard. We promise you, things can get downright confusing when trying to sort it all out.

We've managed to sort things out, so you don't have to sweat over what works with what browser and

what doesn't work. This book, therefore, is the definitive guide to HTML. We give details for all the elements of the HTML 4.0 standard, plus the variety of interesting and useful extensions to the language - some proposed standards - that the popular browser manufacturers have chosen to include in their products, such as:

Cascading Style Sheets

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Java and JavaScript

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Layers

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Multiple columns

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And while we tell you about each and every feature of the language, standard or not, we also tell you which browsers or different versions of the same browser implement a particular extension and which don't. That's critical knowledge when you want to create web pages that take advantage of the latest version of Netscape Navigator versus pages that are accessible to the larger number of people using Internet Explorer, Mosaic, or even Lynx, a popular text-only browser for Unix systems.

In addition, there are a few things that are closely related but not directly part of HTML. For example, we touch, but do not handle CGI and Java programming. CGI and Java programs work closely with HTML documents and run with or alongside browsers, but are not part of the language itself, so we don't delve into them. Besides, they are comprehensive topics that deserve their own books, such as
CGI Programming on the World Wide Web
and
Java in a Nutshell
, both published by O'Reilly & Associates.

In short, this book is your definitive guide to HTML as it is and should be used, including every extension we could find. Many aren't documented anywhere, even in the plethora of online guides.

But, if we've missed anything, certainly let us know and we'll put it in the next edition.

Text Conventions

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