HTML is an indispensable part of web programming. Its popularity is constantly increasing, and its considered the official web standard. So, what exactly is HTML? How did HTML come about, and what is its structure? Lets find out below.

HTML is an indispensable part of web programming. Its popularity is constantly increasing, and it's considered the official web standard. So, what exactly is HTML? How did HTML come about, and what is its structure? Let's find out below.

What is HTML?

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML allows users to create and structure elements on a web page such as paragraphs, headings, links, quotes, tables, etc.

• HTML elements are the blocks of an HTML web page, represented by markup tags.
• HTML markup tags contain content such as 'paragraph', 'heading', 'table', etc.
• Browsers don't display HTML tags directly, but they use them to render the content of a page.

HTML is not a programming language, but simply a markup language; it's simple and easy to learn, even for beginners in web development.

The history of HTML

HTML was created by Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist at the CERN research institute in Switzerland. He came up with the idea of ​​a hypertext system for the Internet. Hypertext means text that can contain links to other text that users can access immediately.

He published the first version of HTML in 1991, which included 18 HTML tags. Later, the HTML language added many new tags and attributes to mark up text. According to the Mozilla Developer Network's HTML Element Reference, there are now approximately 140 HTML tags, including some that are outdated and no longer supported by modern browsers.

HTML standards are currently maintained and developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

Since the early days of the web, there have been many versions of HTML: HTML (1991), HTML 2.0 (1995), HTML 3.2 (1997), HTML 4.01 (1999), XHTML (2000), HTML 5 (2014). HTML5 is also the biggest upgrade to this language, adding several new tags such as << .

A simple HTML document

Below is an example of a simple HTML document.

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Learn HTML programming

HTML is a hypertext markup language.

Explain the example.

• Indicates that this text is HTML5.
• is the root element of the HTML page.
• Contains descriptive information about the text.
• This element indicates the title of the document.
• It is the element that contains the page content to be displayed.

•  

  This element indicates that the large title will be displayed.
• is an element of the paragraph

HTML markup tags

HTML markup tags (or simply HTML tags) are elements enclosed in curly braces.

content

• HTML tags usually come in pairs, for example:

  and

• The first card in this pair is called the opening card, and the second card is called the closing card.
• Closed cards are written the same way as open cards, but begin with a slash before the card name.

Web browser

The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari, etc.) is to read HTML text and display it. The browser doesn't display HTML tags directly, but uses them to determine how the text should be rendered.

HTML page structure

Below is a simplified image of the HTML page structure.

Note: Only the content inside this section will be displayed in your browser.

It only indicates the type of text and helps the browser display the web page correctly; it appears only once at the top of the page (before any HTML tags).

It's not necessary to capitalize.

for HTML5 is

Next lesson: HTML editor

See also: 5 best free online HTML editors for code checking