HTML Research




A Brief Overview and History of HTML:


What is HTML?
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, and is the official language of the World Wide Web. HTML is a language that combines text as well as coded instructions on how to format text. HTML evolved from the more complex and technical language SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). HTML was originally created to allow those who were not specialized in SGML to publish technical documents on the web.

Who Created It?
Tim Berners-Lee was the primary author of HTML, and gained assistance from his colleges at an international scientific organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. His goal was to establish an easier way to publish technical documents on the web.

Learning HTML
HTML is a fairly basic language using “tags” in order to mark specific characteristics on a page. It allows the author of the page to format the website’s background color, font style, font size, font color, and many other options using simple tags.

A simple way to get a start using HTML is to use notepad of any kind of word processor. In order to declare a page as HTML you must give it a .html (dot html) extension. This tells the web browser what to do when it sees each individual tag. Each page also begins with the tag < html > and ends with a < /html> these tags declare the beginning and the end of the page. There are many websites available with tutorials but here is a template of a simple HTML site:

< html>
< head >
< title >

< / title >

< / head >

< body >
< p >

< / p >

< / body >

< / html >

In this example you would insert text in between the < p > tag and the close p tag < / p > to get text on the screen. Of course there would be no spacing inbetween the <, the tag, and the closing > but for viewing purposes they are spaced out. There are various websites containing lists of tags and their usage which was very helpful for me when learning how to create a web page using HTML. Links to helpful resources for learning HTML are listed below, along with the resources I used to gather the information above.

Sources:
HTML Tutorial
The Early History of HTML
Iron Spider Web Design and Resource Center