Some HTML help please (for college)

I

i_hate_toms

New Member
hello everyone. I'm pretty much "lost" with HTML at the moment.
Missed the first couple of classes thinking this is just another language and i can learn it on my own. Turns out, this doesn't even remotely look like any other language i've learned so far. The three other languages I (somewhat) know (not saying am an expert), are C, C++, and Visual Basic.
And this is not at all like any of them!
I have this book here (HTML Blackbook, by "Steven Holzner"/ "Dreamtech Press/ Paraglyph Press, USA., IBSN10: 81-7722-086-1), and this is how the first page looks like:-
<HTML>
Purpose: Starts the HTML document.
Attributes:-
*CLASS: Class of the element (used for rendering). [IE4, IE5] {is this like the "class" construct we use to define ADTs in OOP/ C++??}
*DIR: Gives the direction of directionally neutral text. Possible Values:- LTR and RTL.
*ID: Unique alphanumeric identifier for the tag which you can use to reffer to it. [IE4, IE5, NS4]
*LANG: Base language used for the tag [4, NS4]
*VERSION: Deprecated. Version of the language used.
*XMLNS: Declares a namespace for custom tags used in an HTML document. [IE4, IE5]
Click to expand...
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As you can see, it's not at all anything like the 3 other languages i have learned so far. And this page i typed above, makes no sense to me.
And this is the very first chapter/ page of the book. If I cannot understand this, i will probably never learn HTML.
So I was wondering, all you HTML experts here, could you please explain what this means? Or maybe give me a link to some page where they explain it in an easier way?
Thanks.
 
Moved to General Software.

HTML isn't really a programming language. Thinking of it as one will probably just get you confused. Its more like a presentation layer.

For this tag in particular, the purpose tells you what that it does, there's not much else to say. To make an HTML page at minimum you need <html><body>stuff</body><\html>. Where stuff is the rest of your page. You usually want a <head> section with a <title> in it and possibly <script> and/or <style> but the last 2 are getting way ahead of where you are at.

I wouldn't worry about the attributes of the tag for now. You won't need them yet. You can revisit them when you are more comfortable with everything else. But to answer your question, in html seeing class is not like what you'd see in C++/Java/OOLangaugeXYZ.
 
Thanks Cromewell,
So then, for the time being, i just learn the "tag" and its "purpose", and skip the "Attributes" section?
The book actually begins to make sense if i do that :P
 
For now that'd be my suggestion. The attributes aren't complicated but since you won't be using them until you get into CSS and JavaScript it doesn't matter.
 
Ok cool. Thanks. That's what i'll do then. Maybe I'll update this thread if i get stuck somewhere. Thanks for your suggestion. :good:
 
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