In 2009, it is estimated that more than 1.5 billion people have access to the Internet, including
220 million in the U.S. alone. Throw in 338 million Chinese users, 55 million German users, 48
million British users, 38 million Russian users, and 67 million Brazilians, and you can see the
meaning of the word “world” in the term World Wide Web. Many of these Internet users are also
creating content for the Web—you can be one of them! Although accurate measurements of the
total number of web pages are difficult to come by, Google’s most recent data indicates they hit
the 1 trillion mark of indexed pages in the middle of 2008.
In the next 24 hours, hundreds of millions of new pages will appear in accessible areas of the
Internet. At least as many pages will be placed on private intranets, where they will be viewed by
businesspeople connected via their local networks. Every one of those pages—like the more than
1 trillion pages already online—will use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
As you complete the 24 one-hour lessons in this book, your web pages will be among those that
appear on the Internet. These lessons will also help you develop one of the most valuable skills in
the world today: mastery of HTML.
Can you really learn to create top-quality web pages yourself, without any specialized software, in
less time than it takes to schedule and wait for an appointment with a highly paid HTML wizard?
Can this relatively short, easy-to-read book really enable you to teach yourself state-of-the-art web
page publishing?
Yes. In fact, within the first two lessons in this book, someone with no previous HTML experience
at all can have a web page ready to place on the web.
How can you learn the language of the Web so fast? By example. This book organizes HTML into
simple steps and then shows you exactly how to tackle each step. Every HTML code example is
listed directly before a picture of the web page it produces. You see how it’s done, you read a
clear, concise explanation of how it works, and then you immediately do the same thing with your
own page. Ten minutes later, you’re on to the next step.
After 24 hours of work, you’re marveling at your own impressive pages on the Internet.