HTML

HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language consisting of a set of tags for marking up hypertext documents [1]. HTML is a W3C standard used for creating World Wide Web pages. HTML conforms to, and is a subset of, Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

HTML resembles old-fashioned typesetting code, where a block of text is surrounded by tags that indicate how it should appear. HTML allows text to be linked to another file on the Internet, similar to Vannevar Bush's proposed Memory Extender (Memex).

Tim Berners-Lee created the original HTML (and many associated protocols such as HTTP) on a NeXTcube workstation using the NeXTSTEP development environment.

Tags

Like most markup languages, HTML uses tags to convey information.

Current Version

The HTML standard is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (commonly shortened to W3C). The current official version of HTML is 4.01 which was ratified in December 1999. 4.01 is a minor step from 1997's 4.0 standard.

XHTML

HTML has been partially replaced by Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML), which is a reformulation of HTML using Extensible Markup Language (XML). The current version of XHTML is [2], which was released in 2001.

See also

• Body text

External links

Tutorials and guides

• HTML Source: HTML Tutorials
• HTML Dog
• HTML.net
• HTMLQuick.com tutorials

HTML Markup Validators

• W3C's Markup Validator
• WDG HTML Validator
• Validators and checkers (Site Check)
• Off-line HTML Validator v1.0 for Windows

Other specifications

• Web Applications 1.0 A specification generally referred to as "HTML 5". The Web Hypertext Application Technology working group are an independent initiative who cooperate with the W3C.