In the world of web development, HTML is a name that is familiar to nearly everyone. It’s the language that is used to create and structure the content of the web pages we visit every day. However, despite its widespread use, many people don’t actually know what HTML is, where it came from, or how it works.
We’ll provide a comprehensive guide to HTML, covering everything from what it is to its history and some of its most common syntax.
What is HTML?
As we mentioned in the introduction, HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It’s a standard markup language that is used to create web pages. Essentially, HTML is the language that web developers use to structure the content of a web page.
While HTML is just one of several technologies used to create web pages, it’s arguably the most important. Without HTML, there would be no way to structure the content of a web page in a way that could be interpreted by web browsers.
Hyperlinks, or links, are a key feature of HTML. These are the clickable elements on a web page that allow users to navigate to other web pages. HTML allows developers to create links by specifying the URL of the page that the link should point to.
History of HTML
HTML has a long and interesting history. It was first developed in the early 1990s by Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist who was working as a contractor for CERN at the time. Berners-Lee was developing both browser and server software, and he needed a way to structure the content of the web pages that he was creating.
In 1991, Berners-Lee published a document called HTML Tags, which outlined the eighteen elements that made up HTML at the time. From these humble beginnings, HTML has grown and evolved over the years, with new elements and features being added with each new version.
There have been five major versions of HTML since its original inception. The most recent version is HTML5, which was published by the W3C as a recommendation in 2017. HTML5 includes a number of new features, such as native support for video and audio, and improved support for mobile devices.
Syntax of HTML
So, what does HTML actually look like? At its most basic level, HTML consists of a series of elements that are used to structure the content of a web page. These elements are enclosed in tags, which tell the browser how to interpret the content.
For example, the following code creates a basic HTML document:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 |
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>This is My Web Page</title> </head> <body> <h1>Welcome to my new basic HTML document web page!</h1> <p>This is some sample text in my web page.</p> </body> </html> |
Let’s break down each HTML element in the HTML document:
- The
<!DOCTYPE html>
declaration at the beginning tells the browser that this is an HTML5 document. - The
<html>
tag marks the beginning of the HTML document. - The
<head>
section contains metadata about the document, such as the page title. - The
<title>
tag specifies the title of the page. - The
<body>
section contains the actual content of the page. - The
<h1>
tag creates a heading. - The
<p>
tag creates a paragraph.
This is just a simple example, but it should give you an idea of what HTML looks like. There are many more elements and tags that you can use to structure your content, including images, links, lists, tables, and more.
Summary
HTML is the language that powers the web. It’s a markup language that allows developers to structure the content of a web