HTML is a markup language for describing web documents (web pages).
- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML adds “markup” to Standard English text. “Hypertext” refers to links — hyperlinks — that connect Web pages to one another.
- A markup language is a set of markup tags.
- HTML documents are described by HTML tags.
- Each HTML tag describes different document content.
- HTML is not case-sensitive.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>The <head> tag in HTML is used to contain metadata and information about the document that is not displayed directly on the web page. This information can include the document title, character set, styles, scripts, and other meta-information. The content within the <head> element helps browsers understand how to handle the document and how it should be displayed. It is for machine-readable information (metadata) about the document not for human readability.
Example:
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Coder Abhijit Page Title</title>
<meta name="description" content="This is a brief description of Coderabhijit page.">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Example">
<meta name="author" content="Coder Abhijit">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">
<script src="script.js"></script>
</head>The <title> tag in HTML is used to define the web page’s title, which is displayed on the browser’s title bar or tab. It is placed within the <head> section of the HTML document. Search engines also use the content inside the <title> tag as the page’s title in search results.
Example:
<title>Coder Abhijit Page Title</title>The <body> tag in HTML is used to define the main content of the web page that is visible to the users. It is placed within the <html> element and comes after the <head> section. All the content you want to display on the web page, such as text, images, links, videos, and other media, should be placed inside the <body> tag.
Example:
<body>
<h1>Welcome to Coder Abhijit</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph of text on Coder Abhijit page.</p>
<img src="https://tinyurl.com/yellow-dogs" alt="Dog image">
<a href="https://www.coderabhijit.com">Visit Now</a>
<video>
<source src="https://youtu.be/AVfJPB9gtMM" type="video/mp4">
</video>
</body>History of HTML
HTML is an evolving language. It doesn’t stay the same for long before a revised set of standards and specifications are brought in to allow easier creation of prettier and more efficient sites.
Let’s start at the beginning…
HTML 1.0
The Hyper Text Markup Language was the brainchild of Sir Tim Berners-Lee. In 1991 he wrote a document called “HTML Tags” in which he proposed fewer than two dozen elements that could be used for writing web pages.
HTML 2.0
HTML 2.0 included everything from the original 1.0 specification but added a few new features to the mix. HTML 2.0 was the standard for website design until January 1997 and defined many core HTML features for the first time.
HTML 3.2
HTML 4.0 was recommended by the W3C in December ’97 and became the official standard in April 1998. Browser support was undertaken surprisingly earnestly by Microsoft in their Internet Explorer browser. HTML 4.0 was a large evolution of the HTML standards, and the last iteration of classic HTML.
XHTML 1.0
This is the successor to HTML. The “X” stands for Extensible. This is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 within XML (Extensible Markup Language), which is far more rigorous, and is intended to start moving the creation of Web pages away from HTML.
HTML5
HTML5 was finalized, and published, on 28 October 2014 by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This is the fifth revision of the HTML standard since the inception of the World Wide Web.
Advantages of HTML
- Easy to use
- Loose syntax (although, being too flexible will not comply with standards)
- Supported on almost every browser.
- Widely used; established on almost every website.
- Very similar to XML syntax, which is increasingly used for data storage
- Free – You need not buy any software
- Easy to learn & code even for novice programmers.
Disadvantages of HTML
- It cannot produce dynamic output alone, since it is a static language.
- Security features offered by HTML are limited.
- Sometimes, the structuring of HTML documents is hard to grasp.
