HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.The document format used on the Web. Web pages are built with HTML tags (codes) embedded in the text. HTML defines the page layout, fonts and graphic elements as well as the hypertext links to other documents on the Web. Each link contains the URL, or address, of a Web page residing on the same server or any server worldwide, hence "World Wide" Web.

HTML 2.0 was defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with a basic set of features, including interactive forms capability. Subsequent versions added more features such as blinking text, custom backgrounds and tables of contents. However, each new version requires agreement on the tags used, and browsers must be modified to implement those tags.

HTML Itself Is Not a Programming Language

HTML is a markup language (the ML in HTML) that uses a fixed set of markup tags. A markup language can also be thought of as a "presentation language," but it is not a programming language. You cannot "if this-do that" like you can in Java, JavaScript or C++. However, in order to make pages interactive, programming code can be embedded in an HTML page. For example, JavaScript is widely interspersed in Web pages (HTML pages) for that purpose. See JavaScript and VBScript.

The History of Html

HTML, along with Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) and uniform resource locator (URL), were created by Tim Berners-Lee in the latter part of the 1980s. Berners-Lee was collaborating in Switzerland at the CERN physics laboratory with another scientist by the name of Robert Calliau. When Berners-Lee was faced with the problem of organizing his notes, he created HTML to make the information accessible and easy to link.

At first, Berners-Lee was faced with the problem of only being able to use his creations on his own personal computer. In an article on Berners-Lee for Time magazine, Joshua Quittner asked the question: "But what if he wanted to add stuff that resided on someone else's computer? First he would need that person's permission, and then he would have to do the dreary work of adding the new material to a central database. An even better solution would be to open up his document—and his computer—to everyone and allow them to link their stuff to his. He could limit access to his colleagues at CERN, but why stop there? Open it up to scientists everywhere! Let it span the networks! In Berners-Lee's scheme there would be no central manager, no central database and no scaling problems. The thing could grow like the Internet itself, open-ended and infinite. …Sohe cobbledtogether a relatively easy-to-learn coding system—HTML—that has come to be the lingua franca of the Web. It's the way Web-content creators put those little colored, underlined links in text, add images, and so on."

Because of his accomplishments, Berners-Lee is considered the father of the World Wide Web and he has received many awards and accolades for his contributions to the world of computers and technology. Awards and accolades may be the only thing he received for his creations. As Quittner put it: "You'd think he would have at least got rich; he had plenty of opportunities. But at every juncture, Berners-Lee chose the non-profit road, both for himself and for his creation."

HTML was conceived as a simple markup language to render research documents. No one originally envisioned Web pages turning into multimedia extravaganzas. HTML pages have been reworked, jury-rigged and extended into full-blown applications. As a result, the source code behind today's Web pages is often a hideous concoction of tags and scripting.