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Websites seem like these magical things that appear when we open our web browser (i.e. Chrome, Firefox, Safari). We know that websites are hypertext, meaning that we can click between links, travelling from page to page until we find what we need. What may be less obvious about websites is that, fundamentally websites are plain text documents, usually written in HTML or another web-based markup language, such as XML or XHTML.
Fun fact: More than 90% of all websites (whose markup language we know) use HTML (w3techs.com).
HTML is a markup language used to write web-based documents. It enables us to provide web browsers with information about the content of a document. We can, for example, indicate that some part of our document is a paragraph, image, heading, or link. The browser uses this information when displaying the document for users.
HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. Programming languages are used to transform data, by creating scripts that organize an output of data based on a particular input of data. A markup language is used to control the presentation of data.
For a practical example of this difference, we can think about tables. A programming language can help you search through a table, understand the kinds of data the table includes, find particular data points, or transform its content into other kinds of data, such as frequencies. A markup language would instead determine the content, layout, and visual presentation of the table.
Fundamentally, then, a script or program is a set of instructions given to the computer. A document in a markup language determines how information is presented to a user.
NOTE—Markup vs Markdown: Markdown and HTML are both types of markup languages; Markdown is a play on words. Markup languages help format content.
CSS is usually used in conjunction with HTML. HTML tells the browser what the different parts of a document are. CSS tells the browser what the parts of the document should look like. It is essentially a set of rules that are applied when rendering an HTML document. Its name—Cascading Style Sheets—refers to the fact that there is an order of precedence in how the browswer applies CSS rules to a document. More specific rules overwrite less specific rules.
Together, these languages can be used to write and style a website using a text editor (such as Visual Studio Code) directly from your computer. No internet access needed.
However, internet access is necessary if you plan on making your website available to the public. At the end of this workshop, we will briefly discuss how to get your website from your local computer onto the internet.
In our activities during this workshop we will focus on building locally-hosted websites. These are websites that you can open on your web browser, however, they only exist on your own device and are only accessible to you. Locally-hosted websites are not yet on the internet.
True or False: The primary difference between markup languages and programming languages is that markup languages are used to determine the format, appearance, and purpose of content, whereas programming languages are used to transform data.
- True*
- False
Do you remember the glossary terms from this section?
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