HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible, Fourth Edition

Introduction

Welcome to HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible, Fourth Edition. This book was conceived, designed, and written to provide a comprehensive overview of the two largest Web technologies, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

This book serves as an introduction and reference to the information you need to create documents — simple and complex — for the World Wide Web.

A Brief History of the Internet and the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is omnipresent in our lives today, and most computers and computerized devices are connected to it. However, the Web and its underlying Internet infrastructure had a very different childhood that betrays the consumer and commercial base it has today.

The Internet has its roots in a U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) project begun in or around 1960. Among the project's goals was the ability to network computers quickly and across great distances. The network was to be designed to be almost failsafe, allowing connected computers to continue communicating even if assorted routes between them were to fail.

In 1969, the ARPANet was born, connecting several key universities.

The network continued to grow with more and more universities coming online. One of the goals of the initial project — robust, almost failsafe performance — was realized via the Internet Protocol (IP). This protocol enabled communication packets to find various routes to a destination in case one or more of the routes became ...