To access the world wide web you use what is called a web browser. Currently the most popular browsers are Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This page contains text information comprising lots of different commands which the web browser then interprets into what you see on your computer screen. You don't need web authoring software to create a web page. You can simply use any text editor, such as notepad in Microsoft Windows.
Web authoring software simply makes the process quick and sometimes easier.
For this series of articles we will assume you don't have any special web authoring software. Your web browser is the thing that makes your web page look the way it does. As a web author you have to take into consideration that there are a number of different browsers on the market and they can make your HTML commands turn out differently on your computer screen. For example in some browsers you can specify the background colour of a cell in a table, or change the size of the font, however some browsers do not recognise these commands so your web page would have a different look. Most commands have a start and end so the browser knows when to start using the command and then when to stop.