NationStates Jolt Archive

I was browsing through some random guides that say they teach you HTML (which I already know the basics of, thanks to NationStates), when I noticed something odd.

Instead of using the "[" or "]" symbols to denote the start of a code, they use "<" and ">." At first I thought that the site was in error, but three more websites displayed the same information.

I also noticed that some of the code they showed didn't work here, and I am wondering why. Does NS have it's own "perversion" of HTML, or does it use another, similar one? What are all the commands availiable to me?

I was browsing through some random guides that say they teach you HTML (which I already know the basics of, thanks to NationStates), when I noticed something odd.

Instead of using the "[" or "]" symbols to denote the start of a code, they use "<" and ">." At first I thought that the site was in error, but three more websites displayed the same information.

I also noticed that some of the code they showed didn't work here, and I am wondering why. Does NS have it's own "perversion" of HTML, or does it use another, similar one? What are all the commands availiable to me?
They wouldn't want you using HTML on a forum as you could mess up the display. Instead many forums support something called 'bbcode', which includes the tags you're familiar with, and these are then mapped to HTML by the forum software.

bbcode is used for presentational formatting. HTML should not be used for presentation - this is what Cascading Stylesheets are for. Most HTML tutorials are absolutely terrible, and teach you to make code that is neither cross-browser compliant nor accessible for those using things like screenreaders (which read out webpages for the blind). Only 0.1% of webpages are actually valid HTML documents (according to a PhD study). This is one of the better tutorials:

http://www.math.wustl.edu/~msh210/html.html

Ah, I see. Thank you.