Sams Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours

By Dick Oliver

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Put Your HTML Page Online Today
  • I. Your First Web Page
  • Hour 1. Understanding HTML and XML
  • Hour 2. Create a Web Page Right Now
  • Hour 3. Linking to Other Web Pages
  • Hour 4. Publishing Your HTML Pages
  • II. Web Page Text
  • Hour 5. Text Alignment and Lists
  • Hour 6. Text Formatting and Font Control
  • Hour 7. Email Links and Links Within a Page
  • Hour 8. Creating HTML Forms
  • III. Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 9. Creating Your Own Web Page Graphics
  • Hour 10. Putting Graphics on a Web Page
  • Hour 11. Custom Backgrounds and Colors
  • Hour 12. Creating Animated Graphics
  • IV. Web Page Design
  • Hour 13. Page Design and Layout
  • Hour 14. Graphical Links and Imagemaps
  • Hour 15. Advanced Layout with Tables
  • Hour 16. Using Style Sheets
  • V. Dynamic Web Pages
  • Hour 17. Embedding Multimedia in Web Pages
  • Hour 18. Interactive Pages with Applets and ActiveX
  • Hour 19. Web Page Scripting for Non-Programmers
  • Hour 20. Setting Pages in Motion with Dynamic HTML
  • VI. Building a Web Site
  • Hour 21. Multipage Layout with Frames
  • Hour 22. Organizing and Managing a Web Site
  • Hour 23. Helping People Find Your Web Pages
  • Hour 24. Planning for the Future of HTML
    • HTML Beyond the Web
    • From Calculators to Communicators
    • HTML as the New User Interface
    • The Digital Media Revolution
    • XML: Unity in Diversity
    • XHTML, the New HTML
    • HTML Applications of the Future
    • What You Can Do Today to Be Ready for Tomorrow
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • VII. Appendixes
  • A. Readers' Most Frequently Asked Questions
  • B. HTML Learning Resources on the Internet
  • C. Complete HTML 4 Quick Reference
  • D. HTML Character Entities

The Digital Media Revolution

The most important changes in the next few years might not be in HTML itself, but in the audience you can reach with your HTML pages. Many Web site developers hope that Internet-based content will have enough appeal to become the mass-market successor to television and radio. Less optimistic observers note that the global communications network has a long way to go before it can even deliver television-quality video to most users, or reach a majority of the world's populace at all.

I won't pretend to have a magic mirror that lets me see how and when HTML becomes a mass-market phenomenon, but one thing is certain: All communication industries, from television to telephony, are moving rapidly toward exclusively digital technology. As they do so, the lines between communication networks are blurring. New Internet protocols promise to optimize multimedia transmissions at the same time new protocols allow wireless broadcasters to support two-way interactive transmissions. The same small satellite dish can give you both Internet access and high-definition TV.

Add to this the fact that HTML is the only widely supported worldwide standard for combining text with virtually any other form of digital medium. Whatever surprising turns digital communication takes in the future, it's difficult to imagine that HTML won't be sitting in the driver's seat.

More than a million people can already access the Internet without a "real computer"—via TV set-top boxes and from WebTV, Inc., cable TV companies, digital satellite services, and even telephones and pagers. These devices are only the first wave of much more ubiquitous appliances that provide HTML content to people who wouldn't otherwise use computers.

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