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
HTML Editors
There
are so many software packages available to develop HTML. The software packages
can be grouped into two main categories:
- Text-based (or code-based) Editors
- WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) Editors
- Sandbox Environment
Text-based (or code-based) Editors: To start creating web pages, you do
not need an expensive software package but you do need some knowledge of HTML.
You can create web pages with a basic text editor like Windows Notepad.
However, as you master scripting HTML, you will learn that using Notepad or
some other basic text editor is not sufficient. In Windows, Notepad can
be started from the Start Menu:
Select:
Programs | Accessories | Notepad
WYSIWYG Editors: Because WYSIWYG (pronounced wuzzywig or wizzywig)
HTML editors do not require much HTML knowledge, they tend to be expensive or
freeware. These editors allows you to directly work in the "design"
or "preview" view instead of the code view. The main advantage of
working with the design view is that you can design the layout
of your page by dragging-and-dropping pieces of your page layout. Thus a web
page can be developed more quickly than by hard-coding it by hand using a
text-based editor.
There
are several popular WYSIWYG editors available:
- Adobe Dreamwever
- Froala
- Notepad++
- Visual Studio Code
- Brackets
- Sublime Text 3
- Atom
- Download Notepad++
- Download Visual Studio Code
- Download Brackets Code Editor
- Download Sublime Text
- Download Atom
Sandbox: It is an Online HTML Coding
Environment. We will be writing our
HTML code in a sandbox environment called CodePen. CodePen is a great learning
tool (as well as a great place to tinker with small chunks of code on the job).
We write HTML directly in the HTML section of CodePen and the elements that we
create will render in real-time onscreen. This is much faster than having to
save our file and reload it in the browser every time we make a change.
CodePen
also allows us to leave out a couple of critical elements: the html, head, and
body elements. These are important to understand when we start writing HTML
code in our text editors, but for now, we can ignore them, because CodePen
handles them automatically.
