First developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990,HTML is short for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is used to create electronic documents (called pages) that are displayed on the World Wide Web. Each page contains a series of connections to other pages called hyperlinks. Every web page you see on the Internet is written using one version of HTML code or another.
HTML code ensures the proper formatting of text and images so that your Internet browser may display them as they are intended to look. Without HTML, a browser would not know how to display text as elements or load images or other elements. HTML also provides a basic structure of the page, upon which Cascading Style Sheets are overlaid to change its appearance. One could think of HTML as the bones (structure) of a web page, and CSS as its skin (appearance).
The following is an example of a basic web page written in HTML as well as a description of each section and its function.
Example page
This is a heading
This is an example of a basic HTML page.
The box above contains the key ingredients to a basic web page. The first line (DOCType) describes what version of HTML the page was written in so that an Internet browser can interpret the text that follows. Next, the HTML opening tag lets the browser know that it is reading HTML code. The HTML tag is followed by the head section which contains information about the page such as its title, meta tags, and where to locate the CSS file. The body section is all content that is viewable on the browser. For example, all the text you see here is contained within the body tags. Finally, closing tags wrap eachelement for proper syntax.
Because HTML is a markup language it can be created and viewed in any text editor as long as it is saved with a .htm or .html file extension. However, most find it easier to design and create web pages in HTML using an HTML editor.
Once the HTML file is created it can be viewed locally or uploaded to a web server to be...