The HTML StructureThe HTML Structure
"Let's take a look at the HTML code. You can see that the code has structure to it, and..."
I swallowed the last peanut and interrupted, "Uh Rayzer, what do you mean by structure."
"Structure is some organization of parts that will make the parts work like a whole." He lifted me off his shoulder and put me down on the desk next to his keyboard. He pointed to my head. "See you have a head, trunk, and legs. Together they make up a structure, your entire body."
"But I don't have a trunk," I protested. "I'm not an elephant, I'm a spider."
"Not that kind of trunk," he corrected. "A trunk, as in the main torso." He thumped my chest, almost knocking me off the computer table. Oblivious to my outrage, he pointed to the HTML code. "See it has a head part and a body part. And they are contained in the larger page that is the HTML code."
I climbed back up his arm and onto his shoulder so I could get a better look at what he was pointing at. The head part he was pointing at was the section of code between the <HEAD> and the </HEAD>. The body part was the section of code between the <BODY> and the </BODY>.
"Now the head part always comes before the body part," Rayzer said, "you know, like your head is always on top of your torso." I thought about that, and it made sense. Why would your body ever be on top of the head? Boy that would be funny looking. "The head is where information about the web page, but not what you want shown on your web page, is kept. For instance, the title of the web page. When you decide to mark a page as your favorite with Internet Explorer, the title is what shows up on your favorites list."
"So where does what I want people to see go in the web page code?" I asked. I climbed up on Rayzer's head and let my feet dangle over the side. His head was just the right size to make a good cushion. "Do they go in the body?"
"Exactly," he said as he pushed one of my legs aside. OOPS, I guess I blocked his vision of the screen.
"Now there's another thing about structures you'll see in the code," Rayzer said. You'll see that a lot of these special words inside the brackets come in pairs. They're called tags."
He pointed to the word <HEAD>. "See, it's matched by the word </HEAD>. There's another example." He pointed to the words <HEAD> and the </HEAD>. "What that means is that when a web browser find the first symbol, it treats the text in between in a certain way until it finds the matching symbol. In this case, the <HEAD= and the </HEAD= means that the web browser will show the words in between the matched tags as bold faced and extra large. Go look in the actual web page and see for yourself."
"And what about those?" I asked, pointing to a paragraph. "Is a paragraph a structure?"
"In a manner of speaking," Rayzer answered. "See that tag there?" He pointed to <P>? That tag or special symbol means that all the words in front of it, from the last place that tag occurred, belong to one paragraph. The tag also tells the web browser to put an empty line between paragraphs."
"So a paragraph is a structure in the body, and the body and head are structures in the the HTML file." I said.
"Yes. And don't forget, matching tags form their own structure," Rayzer said. He stuck a Pink Floyd CD in the computer, turned the volume up on his speakers. He began to bang away at the keyboard. "Well Spinner, I gotta work on a book you know," he said.
So I left him there with his old music and his book. I asked him one time if I was going to be in his book, but he told me no. I was hurt until he told me that it wasn't a story book. It was a book he had to write for school. Something he called a dissertation. Long word that. It must be a long book.
