Info about Web Pages
Web pages have become easier to build
Web pages can now be built with automatic website makers instead of being crafted by hand in a painstaking process. Web pages are not that difficult to make since the creation of tools made it easy and efficient to create web pages in minutes. People used to have to build them within the confines of the website building tools out there, but now people can just fill out a web form and get a website instantly.
When the internet was first launched, as a method of sharing research between different universities, there was very little in the way of websites of any kind. Instead, data was simply transferred from one computer to another. This was perfect for the purpose, but became rapidly outdated as the internet grew from its original confines as a research sharing platform, into something that is available on a massive scale, with millions of people having access to it, be it from home, the office or a public destination, such as libraries or internet cafes. Although the internet did not go from one stage to the other instantaneously, it needed to change in order to meet the demands of the people using it.
These demands were to access content that was relevant and useful to the users, such as news, entertainment and educational information. In order to provide this information, web pages needed to be designed to serve as a platform.
When the first web pages were built, the HTML language was used almost exclusively to create them. It was a simple language which allowed features such as links to other web pages, text to be formatted into headings and images to be included. In the early days of the internet, there were few other sites to visit, but the use of HTML made it possible for what sites there were to be linked, and the possibility of these links encouraged growth to create an ever expanding network of web pages. As the internet and the requirements of its users grew, so too did the complexity of the HTML language. Functionality was added which enabled multimedia support, and required more knowledge and skill to be used effectively, creating a growing and high paying demand for web designers. Soon, Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS, became available which enabled designers to create a template page which set out the ‘rules’ for the rest of the website. Style sheets allow the background color and image to be defined, as well as things such as the font and size of headings, the color of links after they have been used previously, amongst others.
Although HTML allowed useful web pages to be built, they offered little interactivity to involve the user. This changed with the arrival of Adobe Flash, and other more dynamic programming languages. However, website building for the masses continues to use methods based in HTML, which is now accessible by using simple web based tools. With these, a user can simply enter the name of the website they wish to create, followed by some text for each page, and maybe upload some images. After doing this, they are in possession of a website which may have taken many hours to complete if they also had to familiarize themselves with the various tags and nuances of HTML and CSS. The problem with a lack of interactivity is also now being addressed, with web page building software now also adding support for flash content to be added, such as premade widgets which provide news sources, or for flash games and videos to be added to a web page. As the web continues to grow, so too will the opportunities for novices to create professional looking web pages with very little knowledge and effort.