HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Before You Begin
hroughout this topic I will be demonstrating how you can take advantage of the really cool new features known
as HTML5. It will be very hands-on with lots of code samples and working web pages. Before we get started
however, I wanted to set the stage and provide some context for where we will be going. What is generally referred
to as HTML5 includes many technologies and HTML is just the tip of the iceberg.
In this chapter I will briefly review the operating environments that host web sites, currently and historically.
I will also describe the development tools that are available. While this topic is specically focused on Visual
Studio 2012, there are some free alternatives that will enable you to work through most of these exercises. Finally,
I'll take a quick inventory of the HTML5 support in current and future browsers.
Reviewing Web Environment
To better understand where HTML5 sits from the web developer's view I will first review the web environment
that we find ourselves in. This will be a very basic overview and quite familiar to most readers. However, I often
find it useful to step back, once in a while, and get a better perspective.
The Basic HTTP Page
In the early days of the web, the model was quite simple. It included a web server that was responsible for serving
up web pages and a browser that would render them on the client. In the Microsoft stack, Internet Information
Services (IIS) provided the server component and Internet Explorer was the de facto browser. There were
other browsers, of course, such as Netscape. The browser would request a page from the web server by passing
the address (URL) in an HTTP GET request. The server would respond by providing an HTML document as
illustrated in Figure
1-1
.
