0.2 Our Audience

We wrote this book for anyone interested in learning and using HTML, from the most casual user to a full-time design professional. We don't expect you to have any experience in the language before picking up this book. In fact, we don't even expect that you've ever used the World Wide Web, although we'd be surprised if you haven't at least experimented with this technology. Being connected to the Internet is not necessary to use this book, but if you're not connected, this book becomes like a travel guide for the homebound.

The only things we ask you to have are a computer, a text editor that can create simple ASCII text files, and a World Wide Web browser like Netscape, Mosaic, or Internet Explorer for your computer: the very latest version, if possible. Because HTML is stored in a universally accepted format--ASCII text--and because the language is completely independent of any specific computer, we won't even make an assumption about the kind of computer you're using. However, browsers do vary by platform and operating system, which means your HTML documents can and often do look quite different depending on the computer and version of browser. We will explain how certain language features are used by various popular browsers as we go through the book, so don't be surprised if your browser gets mentioned here or there.

If you are new to HTML, the World Wide Web, or hypertext documentation in general, you should start by reading Chapter 1, HTML and the World Wide Web. This chapter describes how all these technologies come together to create webs of interrelated documents.

If you are already familiar with the Web, but not HTML specifically, or if you are interested in the new features in HTML, start by reading Chapter 2, HTML Quick Start. This chapter is a brief overview of the most important features of the language and serves as a roadmap to how we approach the language in the remainder of the book.

Subsequent chapters deal with specific language features in a roughly top-down approach to the HTML. Read them in order for a complete tour through the language, or jump around to find the exact feature you're interested in.