Monday, June 8, 2020

Introduction to HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the most widely used language to write Web Pages.

  • Hypertext refers to the way in which Web pages (HTML documents) are linked together. Thus, the link available on a webpage is called Hypertext.
  • As its name suggests, HTML is a Markup Language which means you use HTML to simply "mark-up" a text document with tags that tell a Web browser how to structure it to display.

Originally, HTML was developed with the intent of defining the structure of documents like headings, paragraphs, lists, and so forth to facilitate the sharing of scientific information between researchers.

Now, HTML is being widely used to format web pages with the help of different tags available in HTML language.

  • HTML is the language for publishing web pages on the WWW (World-Wide Web).
  • HTML is a Document Description Language (aka Document Markup Language). HTML is NOT a programming language like C/C++/C#/Java, which is used to implement programming algorithm.
  • You need a web browser to view the HTML pages. The web browsers do not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the web pages.
  • An HTML document is a text document, and it is human-readable.

HTML was originally developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. He is also known as the father of the web. In 1996, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) became the authority to maintain the HTML specifications. HTML also became an international standard (ISO) in 2000. HTML5 is the latest version of HTML. HTML5 provides a faster and more robust approach to web development.

There have been many versions since the early days of the web as you can see.

HTML  (Launched in 1991)
HTML 2.0 (Launched in 1995)
HTML 3.2 (Launched in 1997)
HTML 4.01 (Launched in 1999)
XHTML (Launched in 2000)
HTML5 (Launched in 2014)
HTML 5.2 (Launched in 2017)

HTML 5.3 (Launched in 2020)

Applications of HTML

There are lot more things you can do with HTML.

  • You can publish documents online with text, images, lists, tables, etc.
  • You can access web resources such as images, videos or other HTML document via hyperlinks.
  • You can create forms to collect user inputs like name, e-mail address, comments, etc.
  • You can include images, videos, sound clips, flash movies, applications and other HTML documents directly inside an HTML document.
  • You can create offline version of your website that work without internet.
  • You can store data in the user's web browser and access later on.
  • You can find the current location of your website's visitor.

Advantages of HTML:

  • It is easy to learn and easy to use.
  • It is platform independent.
  • Images, video and audio can be added to a web page.
  • It is supported by all browsers.
  • It can be integrated with other languages like CSS, JavaScript etc.

Disadvantages:

  • HTML can create only static webpages so for dynamic web page other languages have to be used.
  • Large amount of code has to be written to create a simple web page.
  • Security feature is not good.

What is HTML5?

HTML5 is the fifth version of the HTML scripting language. It supports a lot of new things that older versions of HTML does not. For Example: In HTML5 there is something new called the Semantic Elements. Semantic elements have meaningful names which tell about the type of content. For example header, footer, table, … etc. HTML5 introduces many semantic elements which make the code easier to write and understand for the developer as well as instructs the browser on how to treat them.

Difference between HTML and HTML5