Tools for Information Literacy

Useful Terms

Hypertext

a means of connecting documents by text links

HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language:
a language that uses elements, attributes, and values (markup) to construct and link (hypertext) documents for easy access and display

XML

E xtensible Markup Language
a customizable markup language

XHTML

E xtensible Hyper text Markup Language
a reformulation of HTML 4 as an XML 1.0 application.

DHTML

Dynamic Hyper text Markup Language:
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript combined to create dynamic (as opposed to static) pages

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language
the mother language from which HTML, XHTML, and XML were created

HTML Element

Element- a container that specifies the nature, formatting, or function of a portion of a document.
Examples might include: <form>, <table>, <p>, <img>

Tag - signifies the opening and closing of an element.
These tags signify the opening and closing of a table: <table> </table>

Attribute lists a characteristic of a particular element.
In this case, it lists the characteristic of a border for the table: <tableborder="3">

Value modifies the attribute in which it occurs.
In this case, it is modifying the border attribute: <table border="3">

Empty element - an element that has no content and is written as a single tag,
such as <br>

Block element always starts on a new line, and the browsers automatically add some space (a margin) before and after the element.
Paragraph <p>, Heading 1 <h1>, and Div <div> are block elements

Inline element displays inline and does not generate a line break.
Examples include <strong> for bold and <em> for italics

Proprietary element is an element not part of the official HTML recommendation and often it is supported only by the browser for which it was developed.
An example would be Netscape's <blink> element

Deprecated element or attribute is an element or attribute that is being phased out of HTML and therefore eventually will not be supported by browsers

Nesting is the practice of placing elements inside one another (as opposed to overlapping them). Nesting is the correct syntax for HTML.

Overlapping is incorrect and can cause problems with your web page.

Client-server agents

User agent is the means (e.g., a Web browser) by which one accesses an HTML document.

Client-side describes anything that is done on the user's computer

Server-side describes anything that is done on the Web server

CGI, or Common Gateway Interface is a standard method for web server software to delegate the generation of web content to executable files.

Script is a portion of programming code that can function in a Web page or on the server, but not as a stand-alone program

Applet is a small program that can be embedded in a Web page

Document

Well-formed document is one that uses correct HTML or XHTML syntax

Valid document is one that conforms to a particular DTD (Document Type Definition)

Document Type Definition, or DTD is a standard that identifies the elements, attributes, and values that comprise HTML, XHTML, XML, or any other language created with SGML.

W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, the group responsible for establishing standards for the World Wide Web

for task 02a, you will need to validate your HTML code using the W3C Markup Validation Service

for task 02b, you may wish to validate your CSS using the W3C CSS Validation Service