Page 112 - Electronic Commerce

Technology Infrastructure: The Internet and the World Wide Web

university’s home page. The following example shows the HTML code to create a
hyperlink to another Web server:
87
<a href="http://www.gsu.edu">Georgia State University </a>
Similarly, the résumé could include a local link to another part of the same document
with the following marked-up text:
<a href="#references">References are found here</a>
In both of these examples, the text between the anchors appears on the Web page as
a hyperlink. Most browsers display the link in blue and underline it. In most browser
software, the action of moving the mouse pointer over a hyperlink causes the mouse
pointer to change from an arrow to a pointing hand.

Scripting Languages and Style Sheets
Versions of HTML released by the W3C after 1997 include an HTML tag called the object
tag, which Web designers can use to embed scripting language code on HTML pages. You
will learn more about Web page scripting techniques in Chapter 8.
A style sheet is a set of instructions that gives Web developers more control over the
format of displayed pages. Similar to document styles in word-processing programs, style
sheets let designers define formatting styles in one place that can be applied to multiple
Web pages. The style sheet is usually stored in a separate file and is referenced using the
HTML style tag; however, it can be included as part of a Web page’s HTML file.
Most Web designers today use a specific type of style sheet called a cascading style sheet
(CSS), so named because many CSSs can be applied to each Web page, one on top of the other,
and the styles from each style sheet flow (or cascade) into the next. For example, a three-stage
cascade might include one style sheet with formatting instructions for text within heading 1
tags, a second style sheet with formatting instructions for text within heading 2 tags, and a
third style sheet with formatting instructions for text within paragraph tags. A designer who
later decides to change the formatting of heading 2 text can just replace the second style sheet
with a different one. Those changes would cascade into the third style sheet.

Extensible Markup Language (XML)
As the Web grew, HTML continued to provide a useful tool for Web designers who wanted
to create attractive layouts of text and graphics on their pages. However, as companies
began to conduct electronic commerce on the Web, the need to present large amounts of
data on Web pages also became important. Companies created Web sites that contained
lists of inventory items, sales invoices, purchase orders, and other business data. The need
to keep these lists updated was also important and posed a new challenge for many Web
designers. The tool that had helped these Web designers create useful Web pages, HTML,
was not such a good tool for presenting or maintaining information lists.
In the late 1990s, companies began turning to XML to help them maintain Web pages that
contained large amounts of data. XML uses paired start and stop tags in much the same way as
database software defines a record structure. For example, a company that sells products on
the Web might have Web pages that contain descriptions and photos of the products it sells.
The Web pages are marked up with HTML tags, but the product information elements

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