What is HTML?
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It’s the building block of the World Wide Web. HTML defines the meaning and structure of web content.
Now let’s understand what is meant by HyperText Markup Language.
HyperText refers to the way in which Web pages (HTML documents) are linked together. Here one document links to one or more other documents and those documents again link to one or more other documents or they may link back to the original document.
HTML uses tags to "mark up" a text document to tell a Web browser how to structure the content to be displayed.
HTML has semantics that has meanings and syntax that defines the language rules. These language rules should be followed to develop a web page correctly using HTML.
The History of HTML
- HTML 1.0 - Released in 1993 with the intention of sharing information that can be readable and accessible via web browsers.
- HTML 2.0 - Published in 1995, which contains all the features of HTML 1.0 along with a few additional features, which remained the standard markup language for designing and creating websites until January 1997 and refined various core features of HTML.
- HTML 3.0 - Included improved new features of HTML, giving more powerful characteristics for webmasters in designing web pages. But these powerful features of new HTML slowed down the browser in applying further improvements.
- HTML 4.01 - Widely used and was a successful version of HTML before HTML 5.0.
- HTML 5 - An extended version of HTML 4.01, which was published in the year 2012.
HTML Tags
HTML is a markup language and makes use of tags to structure the content.
These tags are enclosed within angle braces <tag_name>.
Except for a few tags, most of the tags have their corresponding closing tags.
E.g.: <html> has its closing tag </html> and <body> tag has its closing tag </body> tag. But the <br> tag has no closing tag.
HTML Attributes
- All HTML elements can have attributes
- Attributes provide additional information about elements
- Attributes are always specified in the start tag
- Attributes usually come in name/value pairs like: name="value"
- E.g. <a href="https://www.thabrewblog.blogspot.com">Thabrew Blog</a>
HTML Document Structure
Each and every HTML 5 document uses a unique combination of elements and content to define a web page. An HTML 5 document should contain
- A declaration at the top, which indicates that it is an HTML 5 document
- A document header
- A document body
- A collection of HTML 5 elements
- Some of these elements are mandatory while others are optional. But we can always find the following three elements on every page in addition to the DOC Type declaration at the top.
1. <!DOCTYPE> declaration
<!DOCTYPE> informs the browsers that it is actually an HTML 5 document.
2. Opening and Closing <html></html> tags
The DOCType Declaration is followed by <html></html> opening and closing tags. These tags contain everything inside the document, including the Head and Body
3. Opening and Closing <head> </head> tags
<head> </head> opening and closing tags, follow the opening Html tag. These tags contain information about the body, title of the page, definitions, labels, etc. You can only use certain markup elements in the HTML 5 head. Some of these elements include style, title, base, link, script, and meta. In HTML 5, these elements are collectively known as HTML Head Elements.
4. Opening and Closing <body> </body> tags
After the closing head tag is the <body> </body> opening and closing body tags. They contain all the content which appears on the browser.