<blink>Blinking text
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™
These tags can perform several functions:
Whenever your web browser asks a web server for a document, the server
sends the browser a copy of the HTML source for the requested web page.
The browser, in turn, parses the source and displays the formatted page
on your screen. (You can choose "Page Source" (Netscape) or "Source" (Explorer) from the "View" menu and take a look at the
HTML source for any page). It is the browser that interprets and knows
the meaning of the tags in an HTML source file.
HTML markup tags come in two flavors, free-standing and paired:
Here is an example of a free-standing tag in HTML:
This tag causes the browser to move to a new line, draw a horizontal rule (a straight line between the margins, such as immediately follows this sentence), and move to the following line.
Until you become familiar with the syntax of HTML markup, it can be a little confusing
to encounter tags in the middle of a paragraph and figure out what they mean. Let`s
"dissect" these tags, taking a look at each part ("token" in the jargon).
The browser first "reads in" the token "<". At
that point, the browser knows that the text following the "<" symbol
is a markup tag. It then reads more characters until it finds a ">"
symbol. Then, the browser attempts to decipher the material between those angle brackets, interpreting it as a tag. If it can find that tag in its programmed-in list of rules, it
formats the text that follows it accordingly. If it cannot find that tag on its list, it ignores it. So, any text that
follows a markup tag is formatted on your screen according to the
rules for that tag that are programmed into the browser, if any.
How do we turn off a tag once it has been read
and interpreted by a browser?
Paired tags have a start tag and an end tag. Start tags are
the tag name surrounded by "<" and ">". End tags have the same
name as their start tag counterpart, but have a "/" after the "<", before the name of
the tag. If you look at our example, it will become more clear:
Notice that after the word Greetings! there is another tag, but this
time the tag is slightly different, in that there is a "/" in front of
the tag name. Think of the end tag as the "off" switch. By putting
in an end tag, you are telling the browser that you no longer want the
text formatted according to the rules for that tag.
Let`s see an example in action:
This is some text followed by some more text that I don`t want to blink.
This is some text followed by some more text that I don`t want to blink.
Your web browser reads in the tag and stops the formatting, in this case
turning BLINK off.
So now you have learned two things:
HTML is an example of the distinction between "de jure" and "de facto" standards. Only a few versions of HTML have gone through the official international standardization process. The technology of HTML is still changing so rapidly that there are many different versions of HTML in use. (The previous sentence was included in the 1994 version of this page, and remains true!) Each browser defines an HTML "standard" according to what tags it will recognize and how it will format the tagged text for display. When the authors of other browsers decide that somebody else`s new tag is a good idea and include it in the next version of their browser, it gradually becomes "standard."
As an author of web pages, it is your responsibility to decide which tags to use, knowing that using a tag that will be ignored by some browsers means that your page will not look the way you want it to when viewed by people using those browsers.
Dick Piccard revised this file (http://www.ohiou.edu/pagemasters/class/html1/whatis.html) on November 2, 2000.
Please E-mail any comments or suggestions to acatec@www.ohiou.edu.