Web/HTML Documentation
and
Developer's Resource

Ian Graham

The Information Commons, University of Toronto

03 December 1996

This collection of documents and resources is designed as a public aid to developers interested in learning HTML and in developing Web applications. This collection contains an overview and description of the HTML language (including a discussion of URLs), as well as brief overviews of the HTTP protocol and of CGI programming. There are extensive references, as well as useful guides to other on-line resources. The collection has six main sections:

This is my original Introduction to HTML Documentation page, updated and substantially improved. This provides a useful collection of material on the HTML language, and on the schemes used for creating URLs. There is also a description of ISINDEX and FORMs, and of CGI issues associates with these utilities.

This is a breakdown and analysis of the HTML language structure, as indicated by the DTD defining the language. The documents presented are generated by a perl program (dtd2html) originally written by Earl Hood, and modified by myself -- any errors (and there are some, I am still fixing it up) are of course mine. The langagae versions covered are HTML 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Mozilla, also known as Netscape.

This section contains links to several useful on-line SGML resources. HTML is an SGML language -- and if you want to know what that phrase means, this is the section to explore.

This section contains a brief description of the Common Gateway Interface, with some nice explanatory figures. A simple introduction, with references. There is also a short description of Server API's -- how to build CGI-like functionality directly into an HTTP server.

This section briefly describes the HTTP protocol -- how it works and why, and also explains why you even care about such seemingly esoteric things.

This is our resource list of HTML/Web development tools. Very useful, and quite complete -- we actually maintain this on an active basis.

The "Official" Web documents describe the details behind the protocols currently in use, and the proposed extensions. This list points out what the different documents are, and where these documents can be found.

The development of Web protocols and languages is accomplished through Internet working groups. This section explains how you can find out what the different groups are, what they discuss, and how you can find out what they are saying. This is truly for the techno-geeks!