HTML

Guide Note

Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML as it is more commonly known, is a markup language that is used to create web pages. It is the foundational language of the internet, as virtually every web page contains an amount of HTML. It uses a plain text system of tags ("<table></table>" for example) to denote various elements on a web page. When an internet browser displays a page, it reads the tags, which tell the browser how to display the contents inside the tags. In addition to being used for creating web pages, HTML is also sometimes used for other purposes, most commonly within E-Mail massages.

Fast Facts

1. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language
2. The first HTML was written by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990
3. XHTML released in 1999

Though hand-coding HTML is one way of making web pages, it is not the only way. HTML editors are programs that facilitate editing the sometimes cryptic language. WYSIWYG editors like the one that is part of Dreamweaver also users to create web pages using a graphical interface. Such programs are more intuitive to work with, and they automatically generate the HTML behind the web page.