This article surveys and illustrates all the HTML
4.0 tags, and lists them and their major attributes in a handy
reference table.
HTML 4.0 is the latest version of the Web's basic publishing
language.
HTML 4.0 offers Web designers the solid foundations they need
to exploit a host of exciting new features without the hidden
costs of proprietary extensions.
You get much greater control over forms, frames and tables,
and all the benefits of scripts, style sheets and objects.
Links to further resources at WDVL and W3C
are provided.
The WDVL has been recognised for clear, thourough treatments of
HTML and other web technologies since 1994. This article is our
'new and improved' update to extensive materials explaining and
illustrating HTML; it will be useful for novices and experts
alike.
HTML
has progressed a long way since the
pioneering days of
people like Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreessen. Early versions of HTML
were very simple - which helped popularise it.
Rooted in scientific research and academic projects, the focus was on
document structure rather than the cosmetics of appearance.
But the
commercial world began to take note of the possibilities for world-wide
platform-independant communications with consumers, and demanded ways
to improve the 'looks' of their web pages.
In addition to the text, multimedia, and hyperlink features of
HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0 supports
style sheets;
object support;
advanced forms;
scripting languages;
table enhancements;
better printing facilities;
more multimedia options;
improved frame features;
additional named entities; and
improved accessibility for users with disabilities.
HTML specifies contextual information and content for a Web page,
including headings, forms, tables, paragraphs, links, and more.
Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS) specify the presentation of this content.
Dynamic HTML, through the
Document Object Model,
provides an object model and API to allow interaction with the HTML
or CSS information.
Browser manufactures attempted to satisfy this demand by adding
proprietary tags, but this
ran counter to the original goal of platform independance.
Also, embedding presentation information into web pages overloaded them
and made them difficult to change.
were introduced to overcome these difficulties, and
HTML 4.0 was designed to encourage their use. We find that HTML 4.0 and
CSS together finally allow designers to create pages that look good on
the best browsers, and are usable on virtually all others.
Validation
is the process of checking your pages for conformance to the standards.
The main reason for validating HTML is that you are checking for conformity to established standards, and conforming documents should therefore be accessible on the widest range of software agents and hardware platforms. It's not sufficient to view a document under Netscape, and be happy if it looks OK.. nor even to view it also under Microsoft's Internet Explorer.. You could view it under several popular browsers, and be happy if your document looks OK under most or all of them, but this is an ad hoc method. To be sure that your document should be accessible to all readers, you should validate your web pages.
W3C provide a very useful
validation service.
The table enhancements support use of captions
for rendering table content to braille or speech.
Column groupings and improved border control deliver additional design
control to improve table performance and power.
The forms enhancements support
groupings, labels, keyboard shortcuts and titles.
Content providers can display rich HTML in any button, create
read-only controls, group form controls together, add labels to their
controls, provide keyboard shortcuts on controls,
and titles on any element.
