What Does HTML Stand for?
HTML is an acronym for hypertext markup language. It is a language that is used to produce documents for the World Wide Web. Using tags and attributes, HTML instructs browsers on how to display the text, hyperlinks and images on a web page. HTML pages are distributed on the web using hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).
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History
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In the early 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first version of HTML. In 1994, the Internet Engineers Task Force (IETF) created the HTML Working Group, which developed the HTML 2.0 specification. Some web browser developers began to add their own tags to HTML. Many other browsers couldn't support the new tags. In 1994 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed to help standardize the World Wide Web. After 1995, the World Wide Web Consortium played an important role in developing new HTML specifications, as did browser vendors.
Function
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HTML pages contain information about the fonts, text, text colors, justification, background colors, paragraphs, images, hyperlinks and other elements of a web page. Many tags can take attributes, which provide more information about how the page should be displayed. Web browsers can interpret this information to display the page in a manner which is both appealing and useful. HTML tags and attributes are case insensitive. Therefore <hTmL> is functionally equivalent to <html>. Cascading style sheets (CSS) are often used in place of tags to set the font, background and color of a page or set of pages.
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Features
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Every page must have an <HTML> tag and a <BODY> tag. <A> (anchor) tags create hyperlinks in HTML. <IMG> (image) tags indicate where images should be displayed on the page and can link to images stored either on the same server or on a different server as the rest of the pages. <P> (paragraph) tags show where paragraphs begin and end, whereas <BR> (line break) tags simply create a single carriage return. <TABLE> tags create tables with columns, rows and cells to help organize data and text on the page. HTML can be written in a plain text editor, but there are also WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors which simplify the editing process.
Types
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There are two types of HTML markup; physical markup and logical markup. Physical markup specifies the exact method in which a document should be displayed. Logical markup describes the intended function of a string of text. For example, <B> (bold) is physical markup which directly instructs the web browser to display the text in bold. However, <STRONG> is logical markup. A web browser interprets the tag in the best method it is capable of. Therefore, if the browser or computer can't display text in bold (as in a text-only browser), it will display it using a different method that still emphasizes the text.
Identification
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HTML pages can be identified in most cases by their extension. Typically the extension is .htm or .html. They can also be identified by looking at the source code. The <HTML> and <BODY> tags will be at both the top and the bottom of the document.
Effects
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HTML creates a series of interlinked pages that can be browsed quickly and easily. The pages are displayed with a clearly legible and organized structure. No matter how a web browser is programmed, it will be able to format a well-written web page effectively. The same page may look different on different browsers, but it will function similarly on each. For example, Internet Explorer will typically display a web page with all font and color information, images and links which can be browsed using a mouse. However the LYNX browser will display the same page in text only, which must be navigated using the keyboard.
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- Photo Credit Jennifer Claerr
