introduction to html (must read article)

Introduction to html

Markup
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Markup is the information that is added to a document to convey information about the documents structure or presentation . markup languages are all arround us in everyday computing. while you may not see it , word processing document are filled with html code indicating the structure and presentation of the document . (what you see on your screen just looks like a page of text) but the formatting is done "behind the scenes"
by the markup(HTML) and its successor,XHTML, are the not so behind the scenes markup language that are used to tell web browser how to structure and some may say display web pages.

HTML
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HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of tags, surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code (such as JavaScript) which can affect the behavior of Web browsers and other HTML processors.

Extension of html pages is html or htm.

Origins
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Tim Berners-LeeIn 1980,

physicist Tim Berners-Lee,
who was an independent contractor at CERN, proposed and prototyped ENQUIRE, a system for CERN researchers to use and share documents. In 1989, Berners-Lee and CERN data systems engineer Robert Cailliau each submitted separate proposals for an Internet-based hypertext system providing similar functionality. The following year, they collaborated on a joint proposal, the WorldWideWeb (W3) .



First specifications
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The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called HTML Tags, first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991. It describes 22 elements comprising the initial, relatively simple design of HTML. Thirteen of these elements still exist in HTML 4.

Berners-Lee considered HTML to be, at the time, an application of SGML(standard generalized markup language), but it was not formally defined as such until the mid-1993 publication, by the IETF(internet engineering task force), of the first proposal for an HTML specification: Berners-Lee and Dan Connolly's "Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)" Internet-Draft, which included an SGML Document Type Definition to define the grammar.[5] The draft expired after six months, but was notable for its acknowledgment of the NCSA Mosaic browser's custom tag for embedding in-line images, reflecting the IETF's philosophy of basing standards on successful prototypes.[6] Similarly, Dave Raggett's competing Internet-Draft, "HTML+ (Hypertext Markup Format)", from late 1993, suggested standardizing already-implemented features like tables and fill-out forms.

After the HTML and HTML+ drafts expired in early 1994, the IETF created an HTML Working Group, which in 1995 completed "HTML 2.0", the first HTML specification intended to be treated as a standard against which future implementations should be based.[6] Published as Request for Comments 1866, HTML 2.0 included ideas from the HTML and HTML+ drafts.[8] There was no "HTML 1.0"; the 2.0 designation was intended to distinguish the new edition from previous drafts.

Further development under the auspices of the IETF was stalled by competing interests. Since 1996, the HTML specifications have been maintained, with input from commercial software vendors, by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).[10] However, in 2000, HTML also became an international standard . The last HTML specification published by the W3C is the HTML 4.01 Recommendation, published in late 1999. Its issues and errors were last acknowledged by errata published in 2001.