The HTML StructureThe HTML Structure
"Let's take a look at the HTML code. See that word?" Rayzer pointed to the word <HEAD>. "That's a tag. And so is that." He pointed to the word <P>
. "And that." He pointed to </H2>
. "Can you recognize a pattern?"
I scratched my head with my forearm. That always helps when I have to do serious thinking. "They all begin with the character <?"
"Exactly!" he said, and he gave me a peanut. I stuffed that in my cheek along with the two others I had swiped from his shirt pocket. "And they also end in >."
"Tho anything thath thegins with < and ends with > is a thag?" I asked. Rayzer looked at me suspiciously, but I had swallowed most of the peanuts by then. The concept seemed simple enough, but then Rayzer had to show me that it wasn't quite so easy.
"Not everything," Rayzer said. "Only special words with special meaning to the web browser. Like the words here." He pulled up a screen with a dictionary of HTML tags. If the word isn't in here, then Internet Explorer treats those words as content. It either displays to the web page or ignores words it doesn't understand. For instance, the word <Spinner> doesn't mean anything to the browser, so it will probably just ignore it. I don't think it will even display it."
I was outraged. Ignore my name would it? I was about to kick the computer with each of my many feet when Rayzer calmed me down. "Whew Spinner. It's not the computer's fault. That's just the way the HTML code works. It's not intentionally ignoring you. It's just that no programmer has ever programmed the computer to do anything with your name."
That didn't please me much, but I decided it wasn't the computer's fault. As I climbed back to my corner of the World Wide Web I decided I had better learn how to program so maybe soon I can teach the web browser what to do with my name. Maybe when it sees my name as a tag it will sing me lullabyes, I thought as I snuggled up in my web and drifted off to sleep. "Lullabyes, wouldn't that be nice...zzzz"
