Information Every Web Designer Should Know

Michelangelo understood architecture and the human body. Beethoven understood pianos and violins. As a creative type, it’s important you understand a little about the medium for which you’ll be designing — specifically, the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web is made up of a system of Internet servers that supports hypertext. Hypertext objects (text, pictures, music, programs) are elements on web pages that link to other documents or files (such as other web pages).

Navigating the Web

Hypertext links provide the motion of the web. For example, while reading a web page about The Beatles, you might click on the hypertext phrase The White Album. Clicking this link might take you to a website where you can order the album, or perhaps even invoke a recording of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

A single web page can contain many connections to other documents or files. Overall, the World Wide Web contains a complex web of connections among a huge number of documents, graphics, videos, and sounds.

Web designers can create hypertext for the World Wide Web using a coding language called Hypertext Markup Language (or HTML). Figure 1-3 displays a web page with multiple hyperlinks.

Figure 1-3: Hyperlinks on a web page

Although it’s useful to know HTML, it’s not a necessity for web design. With the tools and software programs today (such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, which you’ll learn about later in this book), you can create a web page or add pictures and text to a page without typing a single line of code.