HTML introduction
by Workshop, 8 July 1998
what is HTML?
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a series of tags that you
embed within your Web page document (text files created in a
text editor or word processor). The browser software being
used by computers visiting your page interprets the tags and
displays your web page the way you have designed it. The HTML
tags perform various roles such as text formatting, placement
of graphics, including audio or video files on the page, and
links to other documents anywhere on the Internet. HTML has
become the standard for web page formatting.
brief history
HTML was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at a
Physics laboratory in Switzerland in the 1980's, which
eventually led to the development of the World Wide Web - a
collection of Internet sites the contain color pictures,
video, sound and interactivity. Prior to the World Wide Web,
the Internet was mainly used by the military and government
departments, scientific organizations and universities that
exchanged text information.
what is a tag?
When you look at a HTML example, you will see a number of
sections in amongst some text that start with a left bracket
< contain some text and then end with a right bracket
>. These are known as HTML tags and define the appearance
and formatting of a web page. An example of a tag is
<IMG SRC="myimage.gif" ALT="My Image">
This tag will place an image called myimage.gif directly after any preceding element defined in the HTML file and if the image is not found, the alternate text "My Image" is displayed instead. This tag is a stand alone tag that defines an image and the image properties through the tag attributes. Some tags enclose other elements within a HTML page and apply the properties of the tag to all those elements that are enclosed within them. These are called "container" tags.
different standards
Like most things on the Internet, the HTML standard is always
changing to add more features and enhancements to make it
more flexible and powerful in formatting the appearance of
web pages. So don't be confused when you see different places
on the Internet that say they use HTML 2 or HTML 4 etc. They
are just using a HTML standard that has a certain set of
features. If you are really interested in the different HTML
standards and their different features, you may visit one of
the below links to learn more.
The World Wide Web Consortium
The HTML Writers Guild