What is HTML

Rashmi Mishra
personRashmi Mishra
February 06, 20244 minute read
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What is HTML

HTML is an acronym which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language which is used for creating web pages and web applications.

Hyper Text: HyperText simply means "Text within Text." A text has a link within it, is a hypertext. Whenever you click on a link which brings you to a new webpage, you have clicked on a hypertext. HyperText is a way to link two or more web pages (HTML documents) with each other.

Markup language: A markup language is a computer language that is used to apply layout and formatting conventions to a text document. Markup language makes text more interactive and dynamic. It can turn text into images, tables, links, etc.

Web Page: A web page is a document which is commonly written in HTML and translated by a web browser. A web page can be identified by entering an URL. A Web page can be of the static or dynamic type. 

With the help of HTML only, we can create static web pages.

Hence, HTML is a markup language which is used for creating attractive web pages with the help of styling, and which looks in a nice format on a web browser. An HTML document is made of many HTML tags and each HTML tag contains different content.

HTML consists of a series of elements


Example:

<!DOCTYPE>  

<html>  

<head>  

<title>Web page title</title>  

</head>  

<body>  

<h1>Write Your First Heading</h1>  

<p>Write Your First Paragraph.</p>  

</body>  

</html>  

Description of HTML Example
<!DOCTYPE>: It defines the document type or it instruct the browser about the version of HTML.

<html > :This tag informs the browser that it is an HTML document. Text between html tag describes the web document. It is a container for all other elements of HTML except <!DOCTYPE>

<head>: It should be the first element inside the <html> element, which contains the metadata(information about the document). It must be closed before the body tag opens.

<title>: As its name suggested, it is used to add title of that HTML page which appears at the top of the browser window. It must be placed inside the head tag and should close immediately. (Optional)
<body> : Text between body tag describes the body content of the page that is visible to the end user. This tag contains the main content of the HTML document.

<h1> : Text between <h1> tag describes the first level heading of the webpage.

<p> : Text between <p> tag describes the paragraph of the webpage.

Brief History of HTML

In the late 1980's , a physicist, Tim Berners-Lee who was a contractor at CERN, proposed a system for CERN researchers. In 1989, he wrote a memo proposing an internet based hypertext system.

Tim Berners-Lee is known as the father of HTML. 

The first available description of HTML was a document called "HTML Tags" proposed by Tim in late 1991. The latest version of HTML is HTML5, which we will learn later in this tutorial.

HTML Versions
Since the time HTML was invented there are lots of HTML versions in market, the brief introduction about the HTML version is given below:

HTML 1.0: The first version of HTML was 1.0, which was the barebones version of HTML language, and it was released in1991.
HTML 2.0
HTML 3.2
HTML 4.01

Features of HTML

1) It is a very easy and simple language. It can be easily understood and modified.

2) It is very easy to make an effective presentation with HTML because it has a lot of formatting tags.

3) It is a markup language, so it provides a flexible way to design web pages along with the text.

4) It facilitates programmers to add a link on the web pages (by html anchor tag), so it enhances the interest of browsing of the user.

5) It is platform-independent because it can be displayed on any platform like Windows, Linux, and Macintosh, etc.

6) It facilitates the programmer to add Graphics, Videos, and Sound to the web pages which makes it more attractive and interactive.

7) HTML is a case-insensitive language, which means we can use tags either in lower-case or upper-case.

What is an HTML Element?
An HTML element is defined by a start tag, some content, and an end tag:

<tagname> Content goes here... </tagname>
The HTML element is everything from the start tag to the end tag:

<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>

Some HTML elements have no content (like the <br> element). These elements are called empty elements. Empty elements do not have an end tag!

Web Browsers
The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) is to read HTML documents and display them correctly.

A 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>
Note: The content inside the <body> section will be displayed in a browser. The content inside the <title> element will be shown in the browser's title bar or in the page's tab.

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