Html
HyperText Markup Language ( HTML ) is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages.
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 in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML webpages.
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 explicitly presentational HTML markup.
History
Origins
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. 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 from 1990 he lists "some of the many areas in which hypertext is used" and puts an encyclopedia first.
First specifications
The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called "HTML Tags", first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991. It describes 20 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. Thirteen of these elements still exist in HTML 4.
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. The draft expired after six months, but was notable for its acknowledgement of the NCSA Mosaic browser's custom tag for embedding in-line images, reflecting the IETF's philosophy of basing standards on successful prototypes. 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.
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. Published as Request for Comments 1866, HTML 2.0 included ideas from the HTML and HTML+ drafts. The 2.0 designation was intended to distinguish the new edition from previous drafts.
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). However, in 2000, HTML also became an international standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000). The last HTML specification published by the W3C is the HTML 4.01 Recommendation, published in late 1999. Its issues and errors were last acknowledged by errata published in 2001.
Version history of the standard
HTML version timeline
HTML draft version timeline
XHTML versions
Main article: XHTMLXHTML is a separate language that began as a reformulation of HTML 4.01 using XML 1.0. It continues to be developed:
- XHTML 1.0, published January 26, 2000, as a W3C Recommendation, later revised and republished August 1, 2002. It offers the same three variations as HTML 4.0 and 4.01, reformulated in XML, with minor restrictions.
- XHTML 1.1, published May 31, 2001, as a W3C Recommendation. It is based on XHTML 1.0 Strict, but includes minor changes, can be customized, is reformulated using modules from Modularization of XHTML , which was published April 10, 2001, as a W3C Recommendation.
- XHTML 2.0,. There is no XHTML 2.0 standard. XHTML 2.0 is only a draft document and it is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress. XHTML 2.0 is incompatible with XHTML 1.x and, therefore, would be more accurately characterized as an XHTML-inspired new language than an update to XHTML 1.x.
- XHTML5, which is an update to XHTML 1.x, is being defined alongside HTML5 in the HTML5 draft.
Markup
HTML markup consists of several key components, including elements (and their attributes ), character-based data types , character references and entity references . Another important component is the document type declaration , which triggers standards mode rendering.
The Hello world program, a common computer program employed for comparing programming languages, scripting languages and markup languages is made of 9 lines of code, although in HTML newlines are optional:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<
html
>
<
head
>
<
title
>
Hello HTML
<
/
title
>
<
/
head
>
<
body
>
<
p
>
Hello World!
<
/
p
>
<
/
body
>
<
/
html
>
(The text between <html> and </html> describes the web page, and the text between <body> and </body> is the visible page content. The markup text '<title>Hello HTML</title>' defines the browser tab title.)
This Document Type Declaration is for HTML5. If the
<!doctype html>
declaration is not included, various browsers will revert to "quirks mode" for rendering.
Elements
Main article: HTML elementHTML documents are composed entirely of HTML elements that, in their most general form have three components: a pair of tags , a "start tag" and "end tag"; some attributes within the start tag; and finally, any textual and graphical content between the start and end tags, perhaps including other nested elements. The HTML element is everything between and including the start and end tags. Each tag is enclosed in angle brackets.
The general form of an
HTML element
is therefore:
<tag attribute1="value1" attribute2="value2">
content
</tag>
. Some HTML elements are defined as
empty elements
and take the form
<tag attribute1="value1" attribute2="value2" >
. Empty elements may enclose no content. The name of an HTML element is the name used in the tags. Note that the end tag's name is preceded by a slash character, "/", and that in empty elements the end tag is neither required nor allowed. If attributes are not mentioned, default values are used in each case.
Element examples
Header of the HTML document:<head>...</head>. Usually the title should be included in the head, for e
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