Introduction

What This Tutorial Is Intended To Do

Intermediate HTML is, as you probably have guessed, a companion piece to Introduction to HTML. In this tutorial, I will attempt to cover most of the rest of HTML 2.0, which is fairly universally supported. Not quite everything in HTML 2.0 is dealt with here. This is due to the fact that such things are not widely used and fairly obscure in their purpose. I'm willing to be talked into another point of view, though, so feel free to send me rational e-mail explaining why I should cover any of the HTML 2.0 subjects I left out.

The majority of Intermediate HTML is devoted to the subject of HTML forms. It is especially important that you read and understand Chapter 4, which discusses the theoretical issues behind forms, before moving on to learning the actual forms markup.

There are some subjects which many will be disappointed to find that I do not cover: backgrounds, tables, and frames are the chief subjects I can think of. This is because none of those capabilities are part of HTML 2.0, which is what my tutorials stick to discussing. Coverage of these "advanced" subjects may go into a smaller, companion piece that I am considering writing; time will tell. In at least one case-- tables-- I'd like to wait to see which "standard" emerges as the de facto Web standard. The proposed addition to HTML standard says one thing, the Netscape markup says another, and so on. Once it becomes easier to see which way the wind is blowing, I'll think about writing something.

How To Tell When The Author Is Rambling

At certain points, I'll go off on a tangent related to whatever tag is being discussed. They'll be relevant tangents, but tangents nonetheless. I'll mark these with the following symbol:

When you see one of those, you'll know that I'm taking time out to discuss something other than the actual mechanics of HTML. These could be design tips, browser issues, or anything else.

On Staying Current

One last point I'd like to make is this: the nature of HTML makes it nearly impossible for a document such as this one to stay completely up-to-date. I wrote this tutorial during early 1996, and I'm not sure how often I'll make revisions. Therefore, although I have tried to confine the tutorial to things which are not likely to change, there are no guarantees. A good rule of thumb is that any document which hasn't been updated in six months stands a good chance of being out of date.

This tutorial was last updated on: 15 October 1996.

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Table of Contents
Glossary
Index