TODO supply a title
HTML Introduction
What is HTML?
HTML is a
markup language for
describing web documents (web pages).
HTML is a standard specified and maintained by World Wide Web Consortium. From it's invention,
HTML has evolved through different versions. Present version of HTML is HTML 4.01 & 5.0 Next
version of HTML is HTML 6.0, which is under development. In the consequent pages, we will discuss
HTML 4.01 & 5.0 in detail. Learning which, you will be able to create web pages by your own.
Explained HTML
- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
- A markup language is a set of markup tags
- HTML documents are described by HTML tags
- Each HTML tag describes different document content
Examples
Example Explained
- The DOCTYPE declaration defines the document type to beHTML
- The text between <html> and </html> describesan HTMLdocument
- The text between <head> and </head> provides information about thedocument
- The text between <title> and </title> provides a title for the document
- The text between <body> and </body> describes the visible page content
- The text between <h1> and </h1> describes a heading
- The text between <p> and </p> describes paragraph
Using this description, a web browser can display a document with a heading
and a paragraph.
HTML Tags
HTML tags are
keywords (tag names) surrounded by
angle brackets:
<tagname>content</tagname>
- HTML tags normally come in pairs like <p> and </p>
- The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
- The end tag is written like the start tag, but with a slash before the tag name
 |
The start tag is often called the opening tag. The end tag is often called the closing tag. |
Web Browsers
The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari) is to read HTML documents and display them.
The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses them to determine how to display the document:
HTML Page Structure
Below is a visualization of an HTML page structure:
<html>
<head>
<title>Page title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>
|
|
Only the <body> area (the white area) is displayed by the browser. |
The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration
The <!DOCTYPE> declaration helps the browser to display a web page correctly.
There are different document types on the web.
To display a document correctly, the browser must know both type and version.
The doctype declaration is not case sensitive. All cases are acceptable:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<!doctype html>
<!Doctype Html>
Common Declarations
HTML5
HTML 4.01
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC
"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
XHTML 1.0
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
|
|
All tutorials and examples at Schools-Master use HTML5. |
HTML Versions
Since the early days of the web, there have been many versions of HTML:
| Version |
Year |
| HTML |
1991 |
| HTML 2.0 |
1995 |
| HTML 3.2 |
1997 |
| HTML 4.01 |
1999 |
| XHTML |
2000 |
| HTML5 |
2012 |
HTML Versions In Detail
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of html, used to work in the computer section of the CERN (European Laboratory
of Particle Physics) at Geneva, Austria.
CERN is an institution for researching particle physics
which requires collaboration of physicists all over the world.
Tim has an idea of creating something which would enable physicists to share research information from anywhere
in the world, and he came with html which can contain links of many documents from one document.
Tim's prototype Web browser on the NeXT computer came out in 1990.
- In 1991, an open discussion group html-talk was started across the internet for development of html.
- In 1992, Dave Raggett from Hewlett-Packard's Labs in Bristol, England who was one of the enthusiastic
of html, met Tim and upon returning England, Dave wrote a richer version of html called html+.
- In 1992, NCSA shown interest in web and contributed to take the development of web a step further.
- In december 1992, Marc Andreessen of Mosaic team (an early web browser) introduced img tag in the html
document.
- March 1993: Lou Montulli releases the Lynx browser version 2.0a.
- Early 1993: Dave Raggett begins to write his own browser.
- April 1993: The Mosaic browser is released.
- Late 1993: Large companies underestimate the importance of the Web.
- May 1994: NCSA assigns commercial rights for Mosaic browser to Spyglass Inc.
- September 1994: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) sets up an HTML working group.
- July 1994: HTML specification for HTML 2 is released.
- November 1994: Netscape is formed.
- Late 1994: The World Wide Web Consortium forms.
- Through 1995: HTML is extended with many new tags.
- March 1995: HTML 3 is published as an Internet Draft.
- March 1995: A furor over the HTML Tables specification.
- August 1995: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser comes out.
- September 1995: Netscape submits a proposal for frames.
- November 1995: The HTML working group runs into problems.
- November 1995: Vendors unite to form a new group dedicated to developing an HTML standard.
- November 1995: Style sheets for HTML documents begin to take shape.
- November 1995: Internationalization of HTML Internet Draft.
- December 1995: The HTML working group is dismantled.
- February 1996: The HTML ERB is formed.
- April 1996: The W3 Consortium working draft on Scripting comes out.
- July 1996: Microsoft seems more interested than first imagined in open standards.
- December 1996: Work on `Cougar' is begun.
- January 1997: HTML 3.2 is ready.
- In spring 1998, html 4.01 was materialized finally and become a w3c recommendation.
- In January 2008, a working draft of html 5 is prepared.
Current version of HTML is
HTML 4.01 which we have discussed in our
HTML tutorials &
HTML 5.0 which we discussed at later in our Tutorials.
