HTML

In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages and other information viewable in a browser. HTML is used to structure information -- denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists and so on -- and can be used to define the semantics of a document.

Related Topics:
Markup language - Web page - Browser

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Originally defined by Tim Berners-Lee and further developed by the IETF with a simplified SGML syntax, HTML is now an international standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000). Later HTML specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Related Topics:
Tim Berners-Lee - IETF - SGML - ISO - IEC - World Wide Web Consortium

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Early versions of HTML were defined with looser syntactical rules which helped its adoption by those unfamiliar with web publishing. Web browsers commonly made assumptions about intent and proceeded with rendering of the page. Over time, the trend in the official standards has been to create an increasingly strict language syntax; however, browsers still continue to render pages that are far from valid HTML. The current version of the HTML specification is now XHTML 1.0, this being very similar to the earlier HTML 4.01 that it replaces. The change from HTML to XHTML applies the stricter rules of XML to HTML to make it easier to process and maintain.

Related Topics:
XHTML - XML

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