HTML
History of HTML
HTML, Hypertext Markup Language, is a markup language that allows you to write hypertext. HTML, HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and IP addresses are the basis for the World Wide Web. The invention of HTML in 1989 met the need for writing hypertext documents that allowed internet resources to be connected using hyperlinks, giving rise to the first “webpages.” The decision was taken to base HTML on SGML. Hyperlinks, and the way that text is structured into headings and sub-headings, and a rudimentary search-by-index mechanism were the primary elements of HTML.The early days of HTML were fairly chaotic, as it had not been defined in any specification. This meant that the language evolved too quickly to allow a specific version number to be attributed, and standardization only began to be implemented from 1993 onwards, slowly at first. Until the end of the 1990s, browser implementations defined how HTML worked as a language. The NCSA Mosaic browser, with the invention of the img tag and web forms, made the web more interactive, enabling e-commerce to begin and adding major innovations to HTML.
In 1994, it would be the turn of Netscape Navigator to add its own contributions, with the addition of a number of new layout elements. The evolution of HTML split into two paths: on the one hand, enhancing the appearance of the web, while also increasing the web’s capability to add semantic descriptions and deliver online applications. In achieving this, HTML was profoundly lacking in structure and was scornfully referred to as “tag soup.”
On January 14th, 1997, the first HTML specification, v3.2, was published by the W3C, which in fact chose to describe the practice that had been adopted in early 1996, standardizing tables and other layout elements and preparing the ground for the arrival of stylesheets and scripts.
Then, on December 18th, 1997, the HTML v4.0 specification was published, standardizing styles, scripts, frames and objects, improving the accessibility of content and introducing three format variations in order to encourage the development of markup language.
Over the course of the 2000s, the development of HTML fell by the wayside until the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) took the initiative in 2004, starting work on HTML 5.0. Following this initiative, W3C returned to its roots and worked alongside the WHATWG to improve HTML, while pursuing its own XHTML 2.0 project at the same time.
Major features of HTML
HTML is a language that allows web documents to be described thanks to a mark-up system that uses tags. Its syntax is derived from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).At the beginning, the aim of HTML was to allow text to be marked up, or placed between tags, in particular to add hyperlinks to it.
In order to be valid, and HTML document must comply with SGML syntax, using only standardized elements and attributes and comply with nesting rules that apply to standard elements.
No specific software is necessary in order to write HTML code: a simple text editor is all that is needed. Notepad++ is one of the most widely used.
Among the most widely used HTML tags, the strong tag, which adds a bold style to the relevant text, "ul" and "li" which allows bulleted lists to be inserted into the text, "img" which incorporates images (using a redirect URL), "a" which allows a string of text to be transformed into a clickable link, and "h1" which specifies a particular position in the text’s hierarchy, are particularly worthy of mention.
It should be noticed that there is a “variant” of HTML: XHTML (eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language), which works in a similar way to HTML but which uses stricter rules.