Tech T.I.P. 8/5/2010

The HTML Revolution
By Denise Barrett Olson

We are all familiar with HTML (hypertext markup language) as the language of the web, but did you know that it's also quickly becoming the language of electronic books. The ePub standard, which is used for Apple's iBooks, Barnes & Noble's Nook and a significant number of the public domain libraries, is basically a series of HTML pages with a stylesheet and a configuration file all compressed into one "zip" file. Why is this so interesting? The key part of HTML is text - plain old ordinary text that any computer and any app can read.


Yes, HTML adds tags - special codes surrounded by less than and greater than symbols - to define how the text should be styled. For example, the <strong> tag identifies text that should stand out from the rest. In visual devices, this is usually shown as bold type, but for a non-visual device, like a text reader, this tag could represent speaking those words louder. Most HTML tags have a beginning and an ending tag. For example, <strong> is the beginning and </strong> is the ending tag.

While most of the HTML tags deal with style, there are many that identify parts of the document - headings, paragraphs, lists, block quotes and more. With HTML 5, we'll have even more of these semantic tags.

HTML version 5 is about to be finalized and already web browsers and e-readers are being updated to take advantage of the new standards. As a web developer, I'm thrilled to have the header, footer and nav (navigation) tags to make designing web pages easier. As a family historian, I'm fascinated with the possibilities of the semantic section and article tags. As I understand it, multiple articles can be arranged inside a section and a file can contain multiple sections. These tags will allow me to use HTML to build a well-organized family history and create both a web site and ePub book from that text by just changing the stylesheet.

Why do I find this so fascinating? As the growing number of genea-bloggers is discovering, HTML is easy to use with the right editing platform. It offers a rich multimedia stage to share our family stories. And, reminding you once again that HTML's foundation is text, you are also creating a publication in what may be one of the best archival options currently available. Yes, audio, video and image standards will change, but plain text has been with us since the beginning of the digital age.

I am fascinated with the ebook revolution now underway. Like most revolutions, it's going to be messy as publishers and retailers duke it out on how to make the most profit from this new format. In the meantime the pioneers in self-publishing are learning there's money to be made by doing it themselves. For those of us not as adventurous, there aren't many consumer tools for building ebooks using HTML. Yet. I'm sure it won't be long before they start showing up.

We Rabbits and the growing genea-blogger community have discovered the advantages of HTML as we combine text, images, audio and video to build rich stories about our ancestors. As e-readers and ebook editing platforms mature, we will also be able to collect those articles into ebooks offering not only a multimedia experience but also one that can adapt to changes in technology because of its text base - its plain text base.

Thanks to HTML, plain text is beautiful.

Denise Barrett Olson
Moultrie Creek * St. Augustine, FL
Skype - moultriecreek