HTML
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a descriptive language that specifies webpage structure.
Brief history
In 1990, as part of his vision of theWeb, Tim Berners-Lee defined the concept ofhypertext, which Berners-Lee formalized the following year through a markup mainly based onSGML. TheIETF began formally specifying HTML in 1993, and after several drafts released version 2.0 in 1995. In 1994 Berners-Lee founded theW3C to develop the Web. In 1996, the W3C took over the HTML work and published the HTML 3.2 recommendation a year later. HTML 4.0 was released in 1999 and became anISO standard in 2000.
At that time, the W3C nearly abandoned HTML in favor ofXHTML, prompting the founding of an independent group calledWHATWG in 2004. Thanks to WHATWG, work on HTML continued: the two organizations released the first draft ofHTML5 in 2008 and an official standard in 2014. The term "HTML5" is just a buzzword referring to modern web technologies which are part of theHTML Living Standard.
Concept and syntax
An HTML document is a plaintext document structured withelements. Elements are surrounded by matching opening and closingtags. Each tag begins and ends with angle brackets (<>). There are a few empty orvoid elements that cannot enclose any text, for instance<img>.
You can extend HTML tags withattributes, which provide additional information affecting how the browser interprets the element:
An HTML file is normally saved with an.htm or.html extension, served by aweb server, and can be rendered by anyWeb browser.