Most Internet users know that web pages are made in something called HTML. Even if they don’t know what that acronym stands for, or have never made a web page of their own in their life, the term HTML means something to most web users.
OK, so first a brief review. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. Every web page on the Internet is programmed in HTML. Even if the site you’re viewing is mostly programmed in Java, Macromedia Director, or another embedded language, the site itself is wrapped in HTML, because that is the basic language all browsers understand.
For those that don’t know, HTML pages are what we call “plain text” files. That is, you can open the HTML files using a text editor (like Notepad or even MS-DOS Edit), and the contents of the file are readible by humans. The opposite of a “plain text” file is a binary, which generally is only readible by software, and not humans. In fact, I develop most of my web pages using Microsoft Notepad.