An Introduction to HTML

Welcome to our newest series where we’ll be helping you learn and stay productive at home. With our first series, we’re focusing on getting to know HTML.

We’ll be covering what it is, what it stands for, what tags are, the types of elements and what attributes are.

Some History

HTML was first officially released in 1993 (HTML 1.0), however, its creator Tim Berners-Lee, had first created the language in 1991. Since then, there have been numerous newer versions released to allow users to create web pages much easier and make them look way better than the original pages.

HTML 1.0

HTML 1.0’s only purpose was sharing information across the internet via web browsers. The content didn’t look great when viewed online as its main purpose was to be readable and accessible. Many developers weren’t involved with developing web pages so the HTML language simply wasn’t growing at the time.

HTML 2.0

Two years later, HTML 2.0 was released in 1995. This version included features from HTML 1.0 along with additional features.

HTML 3.0

A few years after the release of HTML 2.0, Dave Raggett introduced a draft on HTML 3.0. The draft included new and improved features of HTML, which gave webmasters more powerful characteristics when designing the web pages.

Unfortunately, these powerful new features slowed down the web browser.

HTML 4.01

Another version released, HTML 4.01 was a widely used version of HTML and was highly successful.

HTML 5

Published in 2012, HTML 5 is somewhat an extended version of HTML 4.01. This version is currently used worldwide by developers.

What is HTML?

HTML is the language used to create web pages and is used to structure a web page by making use of markup symbols or codes referred to as elements. These elements are also called “tags”. HTML elements tell the web browser, like Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Opera, how to display the content when users view it on the Internet. Below is a basic HTML structure:

What does it stand for?

HTML stands for Hyper Text (Hypertext) Markup Language.

What are Tags?

Tags are elements used in HTML and are surrounded by angle brackets. The structure looks like this:

Structure:
<tag>content</tag>

Actual code:

This is a paragraph.

Tags come in pairs and must always begin with a “start tag” and must be “closed” with an “end tag” which includes a forward dash (/).

Types of Elements

There are two types of elements that are used in the HTML language—Nested and Empty.

Nested Element

A nested element is an element within another element. Example:

Empty Element

An empty element doesn’t include content.

Example: Line Break or

A line break can be added between two elements to place them on separate lines.

What are Attributes?

All elements can have attributes which provide additional information about the element. The structure looks like the following:

name=”value”

Example:

This is a paragraph.

Class is the attribute name and “intro” is the value of that attribute.

Example:
Here are a few attributes used with elements:

href – Specifies where the linked document is located
height/width – Specifies the height and width of an image.
class – Specifies the class name that must be used.
form – Specifies which form the element must use.

Attributes are always added within the “start tag”.

In conclusion, HTML is the basic language anyone can start with and is always paired with CSS (for styling) and JavaScript (to make the website dynamic).

Bookmark our blog page to stay up to date with our HTML series to ensure you continue learning about the wonderful language.