HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is the main programming language that makes the Web. Background HTML codes lurk behind all zillions of Web pages on the Net. Many Custom website design actually build Web pages or at least fine-tune them by typing in and editing HTML codes directly. If you don't want to do that, fortunately, you don't have to. Microsoft Word, for example, lets you save your documents as HTML-based Web pages. This way of working is called WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)... You design a document on screen so it looks like what you want. The program you're using then generates the necessary HTML codes to create a Web page that a Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer can display. The WYSIWYG HTML editors allow beginners to build complex Web pages by simply "dragging and dropping" onto the work area. These programs eliminate the need to learn HTML, so you can concentrate on the look of your page. But if you are serious about doing more than a page or two, it's to your benefit to learn HTML basics, because these programs generate too much extraneous code and it's often necessary to "tweak" it manually. That's why many pros think that the best Web pages should be hand-constructed. The basics are quite simple. HTML files are plain text files with special "tags" or HTML codes that a Web browser knows how to interpret and display on your screen. Although Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, Adobe PageMaker, and many others can convert documents to HTML, if you are serious about your online business, you need a good HTML editor, which generates clean HTML codes, includes a Web site building system, and helps you view and maintain all the hyperlinks between Web pages and the links to graphics files included in those pages.
