HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Hypertext is the concept like web pages and help files. Certain words are "HOT" (blue and clickable) which means you can enter them for more depth should you choose. It adds an element, no, a dimension to information. The content/context is defined by the specific interests of the reader. There have been ongoing experiments in literature to integrate this technology, but I have seen little to stimulate the idea.

A Markup Language means that its actual functions and apearance are defined by an interpreter, namely your browser. You can think of this markup language (HTML) just like a word processor, but instead of highlighting the text and hitting the bold button or using the keystroke command, you manually code it by using a consistent system of normal characters to define the beginning and the end of what you want bold.

Lets say we want @ to mean the beginning of bold and a $ to be the end. You then program the browser to understand that the @ and the $ are the bold code. When the browser gets the page, it takes the @ and $ and interprets (translates) them, that is, shows you bold text instead of the @bold text$. You do this for each element of style that you would need to incorporate and make sure that every browser on the web knew all those symbols, and you have your own Web.

HTML was designed mainly for appearance. Before HTML we just had gopher and newsgroups which used ASCI text as their standard which didn't even let you change the size of the text let alone add images or control locations.

Java is the same principle but at a much higher level. It can do just about everything any other computer language can, like C or C++, but is interpreted by what they call a virtual machine (VM) which to most is their browser.

Why do this? It is essentially an industry standard that all agree on to get things done. If Netscape and Microsoft (the bastards) had (very) different markup languages, we web page builders would have to make sure to make 2 different websites (which we end up doing anyway cause Microsoft won't cooperate) so that users of each can take part in the Mudcat. Not to mention Macs vs. PC's and Unix, and variations of each, and each different browser available for each. What a nightmare. The current number of variations and combinations of operating systems and browsers are well over 100.

Java is a program language that runs on any kind of machine that has a VM. The success of Java is its massive compatability. Programmers and companies love it because it saves time, money and effort, and buyers love it because it doesn't matter if you have a Mac or a PC or unix or any browser...

Gosh, I sure do ramble on. Crash course on my world.