Simply speaking, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the primary language in which most websites are written. HTML is the language used to create the pages and make them functional.
Created by Tim Berners-Lee and others in the late 1980s, HTML was based on the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), which was a much larger document processing system. Like HTML, SGML was intended to describe the structure of content within a document, not that content's actual appearance on the screen or page.
HTML is a language for describing the structure of a document, not its actual presentation, the idea being that most documents, such as web pages, have common elements, such as titles, paragraphs, lists, and so on. HTML defines a set of common styles for web pages, and it defines certain character styles.
HTML does not describe the page layout. For the most part, HTML doesn't say anything about how a page looks when it's viewed. HTML tags merely indicate that an element is a heading, a list, or whatever. It doesn't define how that heading or list is to be formatted. In a sense, besides providing the networking functions to retrieve web pages from the web, browsers double as HTML formatters. When an HTML page is brought up on a browser, like Safari or Chrome, the browser parses the HTML tags and formats the text and images on the screen. Different browsers, running on different platforms, may have different style mappings for each page element. Thus, the same web page might look slightly different when viewed in one browser than it does in another. These differences used to be stark, but standardization has come a long way in recent years.
For the first decade, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was the maintainer of HTML. However, in 2000, HTML became an international standard, and development on HTML5 was conducted by both the W3C and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), who were sometimes at cross purposes. In 2019, it was announced that WHATWG would be the sole publisher of HTML standards, although W3C would still participate in its development.
Among the differences between the two groups, was that the W3C had, as a goal, to produce a finished version of the standard, while WHATWG viewed the language as a living language, continuously under development. As the W3C ceded authority over the language to WHATWG, we can't expect to have a finished language.
HTML5 introduced significant changes to the language. Rather than being simply an extension of HTML4, the current version is a collection of technologies that have been brought under a single umbrella name. Several new HTML tags have been added, and many tags have also been removed. At the same time, two new markup languages (Math Markup Language and Scalable Vector Graphics) are now considered part of HTML. Powerful new audio, video, and graphical features, as well as elements designed to provide machine-readable information to specialist browsers and search engines, have been added to HTML.
In addition, several of the enhancements to HTML5 relate to JavaScript, which has also been extended with several new functions and attributes.
Most of the individual changes in HTML were the result of larger objectives for the language. These included encouraging semantic markup, separating design from content, promoting accessibility and responsiveness, reducing the overlap between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and supporting media experiences within the language, negating plugins like Flash or Java.
As a result of these changes, learning CSS and JavaScript are no longer optional skills in web design. Many of the deprecated features in HTML were those used to achieve design and styling effects. These are now the domain of CSS.
The goal of this category is to provide resources relating to HTML, such as tutorials, guides, and informational pages. While they may produce HTML documents, web editors are design tools and should be listed in the category representing Internet software rather than in this category.
Recommended Resources
Mark Pilgrim, the author of HTML5: Up & Running, discusses various features from the HTML5 specifications and other standards. The site is maintained and advanced by the DiveIntoMark team, which adds and updates content, links, and APIs, as well as refreshing and reflecting the current state of HTML5, as a living markup language. Topics include a history of HTML5, and reflections on the goals and purpose that the WHATWG team had for the language, as well as browser support.
http://diveintohtml5.info/
HTML 5 is a software solution stack that defines the behaviors and properties of webpage content by implementing a markup based pattern. It is the fifth major version of HTML, absorbing XHTML. The tutorial is designed for those who want to learn to write and edit HTML code by hand. HTML 5 is defined, and the tutorial is presented page-by-page, although readers can jump ahead through links to internal chapters in the margin.
https://www.html-5-tutorial.com/
Found at HTMLCodeTutorial,com since 2002, the site moved to HTML.com in 2016, offering information for web developers of all levels of expertise, on topics such as HTML and CSS coding. Its topics include an introduction to HTML, its history, and instruction on tags and attributes, HTML editors, and creating a first web page, adding content, closing the HTML document, and troubleshooting. Other resources include intermediate and advanced topics, reference guides, and an attributes guide.
https://html.com/
Owned by BITMA, a Danish company, HTML.net provides tutorials on HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript, and the use of them in creating a webpage. Step-by-step instructions for each are presented in such a way that readers may proceed from start to finish, or jump ahead to particular chapters or individual lessons. Several discussion forum are included, including one for website review requests, and advertising opportunities may be available.
http://html.net/
The interactive HTML and CSS tutorial guides readers through creating a webpage using the Bootstrap CSS framework, beginning with a simple page, and moving on to basic elements, links, lists, images, styles, classes, and selectors. Also included are pseudo-classes, UI libraries, Bootstrap, grid layout, JavaScript, colors, display, box model, and icons. Bootstrap elements, and advanced HTML and CSS tutorials are included, as well as expert CSS tutorials.
https://www.learn-html.org/
MDN Web Docs: HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
The Mozilla Developer Network offers information intended to provide developers with the information they need to build projects on the web. HTML is the most basic building block of the web, defining the meaning and structure of web content. The site includes an introduction to HTML, articles on how to use the markup language, references about every element and attribute in HTML, as well as tutorials for beginners and more advanced HTML developers.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML
Provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the online validator checks the validity of markup language in web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, and so on. All that is necessary is to provide the URL to the document to be validated. Options for checking character encoding and document type are available, as well as to show the source or an outline, validate error pages, or to clean up Markup with HTML-Tidy. Links to other validators are also provided.
https://validator.w3.org/
HTML is the standard markup language for web pages. This HTML tutorial features hundreds of HTML examples, as well as an online editor that allows users to edit and test each example for themselves. Including basic HTML, HTML 5, and using HTML in forms, graphics, media, and APIs, the tutorial includes references about tags, attributes, events, color names, entities, character sets, URL encoding, language codes, HTTP messages, and others. Online certification is available through W3Schools.
https://www.w3schools.com/html/
The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group was organized in 2004 to help define the HTML5 standards, working in conjunction with and, at times, at odds with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which had been responsible for HTML standards since 1990. WHATWG was given sole responsibility to define HTML5 standards in 2019. Its concept of the HTML Living Standard is defined, along with other Living Standards developed at WHATWG.
https://whatwg.org/
