WHAT IS HTML?

Have you ever wondered how HTML, which is short for HyperText Markup Language, began? We'll tell you.

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STORYTIME

Before Sir Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea to invent the W3 Consortium (World Wide Web) and HTML, there was an American Electrical Engineer named Vannevar Bush, a man of influence, and many things, who together with his team designed and built the analog computers. During the latter years of his career, Vannevar Bush published an essay titled, "As We May Think."  In the article published in the Atlantic Monthly, he shared extensive insight on his theoretical device he randomly named "memex."  In the essay, he said;

"Consider a future device for individuals, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library….with exceeding speed and flexibility."

It is believed that this concept he discussed in his essay influenced Sir Tim Berners-Lee's invention of HTML, considering that memex  was meant to be an indexed device for cross-referencing and building a trail of items.

In 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist and academic, went on to invent the World Wide Web. For this great invention, he needed to create a HyperText system that would allow his research colleagues to jump from one document (un)to another on the internet, and so HTML was conceived in 1991, the first version ever.

The first times are usually the hardest, and so was the case with HTML 1.0—It was strict. From the time HTML began, it has evolved from rejection in a funding request made by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to CERN to becoming the official standard language for all web browsers.

Back then, (H,T,M,L) 1.0 was released only to developers in 1993, but even at that, less than a handful of developers were interested in building websites, so the markup language wasn't very popular.

On November 24, 1995, HTML 2.0 was launched, retaining its previous features in the first version but less rigid.

In 1997, on January 14, HTML 3.0 was released and supported the incorporation of CSS, which is short for Cascading Style Sheet.

In 1999, 4.0 was launched with features like multimedia and support for scripting languages like JavaScript.

And very recently, in 2014, 5.0 is gradually replacing 4.0 as more and more developers and web browsers now support HTML 5.0.

DECLARING A HTML DOCUMENT

To declare that a document type is written in HTML, the code snippet is written in the example below:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html>
 <head>
 <title>Web Title</title> 
</head> 
<body> 
<h1>Hello World!</h1> 
<p>My first code.</p> 
<body/>
</html>

This declaration above can be written into any text editor to tell the web browser that the code is written in HTML.

To explain the terms in the code snippet above;

<! DOCTYPE html> is short for Document Type. It declares that the document type is written in HTML5.
<html> is the root directory of an HTML web page.
<head> usually contains metadata about the current HTML web page.
<title> is simply the title of the HTML web page.
<body> as the term implies, it houses the content in the HTML web page.
<h1> is an acronym for Heading 1, which depicts the largest and most important heading on a web page.
<p> is short for paragraphs.

CODE/TEXT EDITOR

In creating web pages, there is a need for a code editor.

However, for practicing HTML, we recommend using a simple code editor like Visual Studio Code, Notepad, TrebEdit, or Atom. And as you get familiar and more comfortable with a particular code editor, you can proceed to install plugins for easy coding.

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