What is HTML?
HyperText Markup Language or HTML is an important part of most web pages and web applications.
Here, HyperText can be simply understood as “Text within Text.” In more simple words, a text with a link inside can be called a hypertext. This link brings the users to a new webpage, once clicked and thus hypertext is used to link two or more web pages with each other.
Coming to the term Markup Language, one can understand it as a computer language, which is used to make the text more interactive and dynamic, by turning text into images, tables, links, etc. Thus it applies layout and formatting conventions to a text document.
Again when we talk about a web page. It should be clear that we are talking about a web document, and more specifically an HTML document. A web page, in general, can either be of the static or dynamic type and can be identified by entering a URL. However, an HTML web page is a static web page.
Features of HTML:
- Simple language.
- Easy to understand and to modify.
- Includes many formatting tags, and thus easy to create an effective presentation.
- Markup language.
- Provides a flexible way to design web pages along with the text.
- Facilitates the addition of links on the web pages.
- Platform-independent and supports all platforms including Windows, Linux, Macintosh, etc.
- Facilitates the addition of Graphics, Videos, and Sound to the web pages.
- Attractive and interactive language.
- Case-insensitive language.
History of HTML:
The father of HTML is Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist, who wrote a memo proposing an internet-based hypertext system in 1989, and since that time a lot of HTML versions have been developed.
HTML Versions:
VERSION |
RELEASE YEAR |
DESCRIPTION |
| HTML 1.0 | 1991 | ● The first version of HTML.
● A barebones version of HTML language. |
| HTML 2.0 | 1995 | ● Standard language version for website design.
● Supports extra features such as form-based file upload and form elements like text box, option button, etc. |
| HTML 3.2 | 1997 | ● Published by W3C.
● Able to create tables. ● Supports extra options for form elements. ● Supports a web page with complex mathematical equations. Became an official standard for any browser till January 1997. Supported by most browsers today also. |
| HTML 4.01 | 1999 | ● A stable version of HTML language.
● Current official standard. ● Supports stylesheets (CSS) and scripting ability for various multimedia elements. |
| HTML 5 | 2008 | ● The newest version of HTML language.
● The first draft was announced in January 2008. ● The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), and WHATWG( Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) are involved in its development. ● Still under development. |
Example:
<!DOCTYPE> <html> <head> <title>Example</title> </head> <body> <h1>Hello</h1> <p>World!!</p> </body> </html>
Explanation:
<!DOCTYPE>: It is used to define the document type. It can also be used to instruct the browser about the HTML version.
<html>: It is a tag that is used to specify to the browser that it is an HTML document. It contains all the elements of HTML other than <!DOCTYPE> and thus the web document is described by the text between HTML tags.
<head>: It is a tag inside the <html> tag, also the first element inside the <html> element which is used as a container for the metadata and is closed before the body tag opens. Here, metadata means the information related to the document.
<title>: It is the next tag and an optional tag placed inside the <head> tag which is used to add a title to the HTML page and is closed immediately. This title appears at the top of the browser window.
<body>: It is a tag inside the <html> tag, also the next element inside the <html> element after the <head> element, which is used as a container for the body content of the page, also the main content of the HTML document. These contents are visible to the end-user.
<h1>: It is a tag placed inside the <body> tag to specify the first level heading of the webpage.
<p>: It is a tag placed inside the <body> tag to specify a paragraph of the webpage.