HTML 3.2

CS 6204, 4984 - Marc Abrams

References:

Introduction to HTML 3.2

"HTML 3.2 is W3C's specification for HTML, developed in early `96 together with vendors including IBM, Microsoft, Netscape Communications Corporation, Novell, SoftQuad, Spyglass, and Sun Microsystems.  HTML 3.2 adds widely deployed features such as tables, applets and text flow around images, while providing full backwards compatibility with the existing standard HTML 2.0.

W3C is continuing to work with vendors on extensions for accessibility features, multimedia objects, scripting, style sheets, layout, forms, math and internationalization. W3C plans on incorporating this work in further versions of HTML."

HTML 3.2 Conforms to SGML

"HTML 3.2 is an SGML application conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 -- Standard Generalized Markup Language. As an SGML application, the syntax of conforming HTML 3.2 documents is defined by the combination of the SGML declaration and the document type definition (DTD)."

Structure of HTML documents

HTML 3.2 Documents start with a <!DOCTYPE> declaration followed by an HTML element containing a HEAD and then a BODY element:

  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
  <HTML>
  <HEAD>
  <TITLE>A study of population dynamics</TITLE>
  ... other head elements
  </HEAD>
  <BODY>
  ... document body
  </BODY>
  </HTML>

Every HTML 3.2 document must also include the descriptive title element. A minimal HTML 3.2 document thus looks like:

  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
  <TITLE>A study of population dynamics</TITLE>

Block Elements

P paragraphs

     The paragraph element requires a start tag, but the end tag can always be omitted. Use the ALIGN
     attribute to set the text alignment within a paragraph, e.g. <P ALIGN=RIGHT>

UL unordered lists

     These require start and end tags, and contain one or more LI elements representing individual list
     items.

OL ordered (i.e. numbered) lists

     These require start and end tags, and contain one or more LI elements representing individual list
     items.

DL definition lists

     These require start and end tags and contain DT elements that give the terms, and DD elements that
     give corresponding definitions.

PRE preformatted text

     Requires start and end tags. These elements are rendered with a monospaced font and preserve
     layout defined by whitespace and line break characters.

DIV document divisions

     Requires start and end tags. It is used with the ALIGN attribute to set the text alignment of the block
     elements it contains. ALIGN can be one of LEFT, CENTER or RIGHT.

CENTER text alignment

     Requires start and end tags. It is used to center text lines enclosed by the CENTER element. SeeDIV  for a more general solution.

BLOCKQUOTE quoted passage

     Requires start and end tags. It is used to enclose extended quotations and is typically rendered with
     indented margins.

FORM fill-out forms

     Requires start and end tags. This element is used to define a fill-out form for processing by HTTP
     servers. The attributes are ACTION, METHOD and ENCTYPE. Form elements can't be nested.

ISINDEX primitive HTML forms

     Not a container, so the end tag is forbidden. This predates FORM and is used for simple kinds of
     forms which have a single text input field, implied by this element. A single ISINDEX can appear in
     the document head or body.

HR horizontal rules

     Not a container, so the end tag is forbidden. attributes are ALIGN, NOSHADE, SIZE and WIDTH.

TABLE (can be nested).

Requires start and end tags. Each table starts with an optional CAPTION followed by one or more TR elements defining table rows. Each row has one or more cells defined by TH or TD elements. Attributes for TABLE elements are WIDTH, BORDER, CELLSPACING and CELLPADDING.

Text level elements

These don't cause paragraph breaks. Text level elements that define character styles can generally be
nested. They can contain other text level elements but not block level elements.              codebase %URL     #IMPLIED   -- code base
             code     CDATA    #REQUIRED  -- class file
Last modified on 26 October 1999 by abrams@vt.edu.