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HyperText Markup Language

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the main markup language used to create web pages. HTML uses tags like <h1> and </h1> to denote headings, paragraphs, and other structural elements. A web browser reads HTML documents and displays them as web pages, without showing the HTML tags. Tim Berners-Lee created HTML in the late 1980s and early 1990s while working at CERN, proposing and prototyping early hypertext systems. HTML has continued to evolve through standards set by organizations like the W3C.

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146 views

HyperText Markup Language

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the main markup language used to create web pages. HTML uses tags like <h1> and </h1> to denote headings, paragraphs, and other structural elements. A web browser reads HTML documents and displays them as web pages, without showing the HTML tags. Tim Berners-Lee created HTML in the late 1980s and early 1990s while working at CERN, proposing and prototyping early hypertext systems. HTML has continued to evolve through standards set by organizations like the W3C.

Uploaded by

rupali thakare
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

Introduction

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the main markup language for


creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser.

HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in


angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page content. HTML tags most
commonly come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>, although some tags, known as empty
elements, are unpaired, for example <img>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the
second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags). In
between these tags web designers can add text, tags, comments and other types of
text-based content.

The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose


them into visible or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML
tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.

HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images
and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides
a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text
such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can embed
scripts written in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML
web pages.

Web browsers can also refer to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the
appearance and layout of text and other material. The W3C, maintainer of both the
HTML and the CSS standards, encourages the use of CSS over explicit presentational
HTML markup.

Development

Tim Berners-Lee

In 1980, physicist Tim Berners-Lee, who was a contractor at CERN, proposed


and prototyped ENQUIRE, a system for CERN researchers to use and share
documents. In 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a memo proposing an Internet-based
hypertext system.[2] Berners-Lee specified HTML and wrote the browser and server
software in the last part of 1990. In that year, Berners-Lee and CERN data systems
engineer Robert Cailliau collaborated on a joint request for funding, but the project
was not formally adopted by CERN. In his personal notes [3] from 1990 he listed[4]
"some of the many areas in which hypertext is used" and put an encyclopedia first.
The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called
"HTML Tags", first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991. [5][6] It
describes 18 elements comprising the initial, relatively simple design of HTML.
Except for the hyperlink tag, these were strongly influenced by SGMLguid, an in-
house SGML-based documentation format at CERN. Eleven of these elements still
exist in HTML 4.[7]

HyperText Markup Language is a markup language that web browsers use to


interpret and compose text, images and other material into visual or audible web
pages. Default characteristics for every item of HTML markup are defined in the
browser, and these characteristics can be altered or enhanced by the web page
designer's additional use of CSS. Many of the text elements are found in the 1988 ISO
technical report TR 9537 Techniques for using SGML, which in turn covers the
features of early text formatting languages such as that used by the RUNOFF
command developed in the early 1960s for the CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing
System) operating system: these formatting commands were derived from the
commands used by typesetters to manually format documents. However, the SGML
concept of generalized markup is based on elements (nested annotated ranges with
attributes) rather than merely print effects, with also the separation of structure
and processing; HTML has been progressively moved in this direction with CSS.

Berners-Lee considered HTML to be an application of SGML. It was formally


defined as such by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with the mid-1993
publication of the first proposal for an HTML specification: "Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML)" Internet-Draft by Berners-Lee and Dan Connolly, which included
an SGML Document Type Definition to define the grammar.[8] The draft expired after
six months, but was notable for its acknowledgment of the NCSA Mosaic browser's
custom tag for embedding in-line images, reflecting the IETF's philosophy of basing
standards on successful prototypes.[9] Similarly, Dave Raggett's competing Internet-
Draft, "HTML+ (Hypertext Markup Format)", from late 1993, suggested
standardizing already-implemented features like tables and fill-out forms. [10]

After the HTML and HTML+ drafts expired in early 1994, the IETF created an
HTML Working Group, which in 1995 completed "HTML 2.0", the first HTML
specification intended to be treated as a standard against which future
implementations should be based.[11]

Further development under the auspices of the IETF was stalled by


competing interests. Since 1996, the HTML specifications have been maintained,
with input from commercial software vendors, by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C).[12] However, in 2000, HTML also became an international standard (ISO/IEC
15445:2000). HTML 4.01 was published in late 1999, with further errata published
through 2001. In 2004 development began on HTML5 in the Web Hypertext
Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), which became a joint
deliverable with the W3C in 2008.

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