Web Pages

A Web page is an ordinary text file. It can be created with an ordinary text editor (such as Notepad.) What makes a Web page special is that:

1. Web pages can be sent from one computer to another across the Internet.
2. They are viewed with a Web browser (such as Netscape Navigator) which presents them in a nice format.
3. They are linked to other Web pages

You probably know all this already. But, just for fun, select the View/Source menu item in your browser to see the text file behind what your browser is showing. If you are using Internet Explorer this will open the file with Notepad.

The actual text file does not look like what you see in the browser. Notice the HTML tags (such as <p> and <ol>) that give the browser information about how to display the file.

Notes:

1. Web pages that have been created using a commercial tool like Frontpage usually look like gibberish when you view the source. But they are still text files.

2. Web pages that use frames cannot be viewed using View/Source. Often Web page authors do this deliberately to hide their HTML source from users.

3. Although the Web page itself is text, tags within it can ask for non-text objects to be included, such as:

   • Images
   • Audio clips
   • Animation