HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for creating web pages, that is, information presented on the World Wide Web. Defined as a simple "application" of SGML, which is used by organizations with complex publishing requirements, HTML is now an Internet standard maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The most recent version is HTML 4.01, though it has been superseded by XHTML.1 Introduction
HTML generally appears in text files stored on computers connected to the Internet. These files contain markup, that is, instructions for the program on how to display or process the text in plain text format. The files are usually transferred across the internet using the HTTP network protocol, after which their HTML may be displayed by a visual web browser, aural browser (one that reads the text of the page to the user), braille reader (converts pages to a braille format), email client, or a wireless device like a cellular phone.
2 Markup
There are four kinds of markup elements in HTMLThis article is about HTML elements. For information on how to format Wikipedia entries, see How to edit a page and In computing, an HTML element (instance) in terms of SGML is the complete sequence of a start tag (with attributes and their values), any e:
- structural markup that describes the purpose of text (for example,
1 Golf
- presentational markup that describes the visual appearance of text regardless of its function (for example,
boldface will render boldface text) (Note that presentation markup is deprecated and is not recommended; authors should use CSSCascading Style Sheets CSS is a computer language used to describe the presentation of a structured document written in HTML, XHTML or XML. The CSS specification is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Overview CSS is used by both authors an for presentation),
- hypertext markup that links parts of the document to other documents (for example,
Wikipedia will render the word Wikipedia as a hyperlinkA hyperlink or simply a link is a reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource. As such it would be similar to a citation in literature. However, combined with a data network and suitable access protocol, it can be used to fetch to the specified URL), and
- widget elements that create objects (for example, buttons and lists).
Note that, besides the presentational markup, which, to repeat, is deprecated, the markup itself does not determine how the content within that markup will look. Basically, all the markup tells you is what the role of the content is. Is it a paragraph? Is it a heading? Is it a list? Is it a link? It's up to the Cascading Style SheetsCascading Style Sheets CSS is a computer language used to describe the presentation of a structured document written in HTML, XHTML or XML. The CSS specification is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Overview CSS is used by both authors an to determine what that heading, list, etc will look like.
1.1 Separation of style and content
Efforts of the web development community have led to a new thinking in the way a web document should be written; XHTML epitomizes this effort. Standards stress using markup which suggests the structure of the document, like headings, paragraphs, block quoted text, and tables, instead of using markup which is written for visual purposes only, like , (bold), and (italics). Such presentational code has been removed from the HTML 4.01 Strict and XHTML specifications in favor of CSSCascading Style Sheets CSS is a computer language used to describe the presentation of a structured document written in HTML, XHTML or XML. The CSS specification is maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Overview CSS is used by both authors an solutions. CSS provides a way to separate the HTML structure from the content's presentation. See separation of style and content.
