B.1 Intro to the Intro

The progress of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) in the age of the Internet and the World Wide Web has unfolded much in the way of classic Alpine skiing and X-treme skiing. Even people who don't ski know about the rules: bend the knees, hold onto the poles, stay on the trails, and follow a curved path down the slope. There is no mention of snowboarding, hot-dogging, playing catch on skis, or combining skiing with sky-diving. What used to be a winter pastime of country folk now requires special equipment, clothing, accessories, lodging, and transportation. Like skiing, HTML started out simply and can still be used simply, but if you follow the trail to the big time you'll find all the fancy and dangerous complications involved in fashionable pursuits, which is how HTML got mixed up with a scripting language like Perl in the first place.