IWUOnline BSBIS - HTML Programming

Few things have had a greater impact on the business world than the Internet. As a result, HTML programming and Web Application development knowledge is critical. However, just basic HTML programming knowledge is not enough. With the entire business community looking to the Internet to help them with information needs and to market their products, students who have the skills to create systems that interact with the web will have very marketable skills in the current business environment.

Two courses on Web Application development are included near the end of the BSBIS Online curriculum. These courses introduce HTML programming, DHTML, principles of JavaScript control structures, various markup languages, ActiveX Control, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), XML, and SQL. Rather than emphasizing the development of static web pages, these courses will take the student one major step forward into interactive web page design. Taken together with Visual Basic programming, Java programming, database design, and Internet marketing, the HTML programming and Web Application development programming courses give the BIS degree a very specific Internet-focused identity.

The following excerpt describes the beginnings of the HTML programming language. It is taken from The History of HTML by Jeffrey Veen, which can be found http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/97/17/index0a.html?tw=authoring. "The history of hypertext markup language is a strange and interesting tale. The idea behind HTML was a modest one. When Tim Berners-Lee was putting together his first elementary browsing and authoring system for the Web, he created a quick little hypertext language that would serve his purposes. He imagined dozens, or even hundreds, of hypertext formats in the future, and smart clients that could easily negotiate and translate documents from servers across the Net. It would work on any platform and browser."

"The problem, however, turned out to be in the simplicity of Berners-Lee's language. Since it was text-based, you could use any editor or word processor to create or convert documents for the Web. And there was just a handful of tags - anyone could master HTML in an afternoon. The Web flourished. Everyone started publishing. The rest is history."

"But as more and more content moved to the Web, those creating browsers realized the simple markup language needed much improvement. How should the innovation take place? Tim Berners-Lee certainly wasn't going to be the sole developer of HTML - he never intended to be. So the developers, in the long-held tradition of the Internet, implemented new features in their browsers and then shipped them. If the Web community liked them, they stayed. If not, they were removed."

HTML programming and Web Application development can be key pieces of knowledge in today's economy. Additional sources of information include:

A Beginner's Guide to HTML - Many people use the NCSA Beginner's Guide to HTML programming as a starting point to understanding the hypertext markup language (HTML) used on the World Wide Web.
HTML Basics - What do you do after getting your basic web pages written using HTML Basics? This section of the site gives hundreds of categorised links to sites.
HTML programming resources - HTML programming resources, tags, and references. Lots of example code and online help.
HTML Goodies - Features lessons on the basic to intermediate HTML tags. Includes an HTML tag reference list.
HTML: Hypertext Markup Language - Features resources on HTML specifications for different versions of HTML. Includes a short HTML tutorial, HTML Compendium, HTML Help, HTML Programming info, HTML Quick Reference Guide.