History of HTML

This section provides a brief history of HTML, which started in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee working at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee published the first description of HTML called "HTML Tags". It contains 18 elements based on a SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) documentation format used at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). Here is picture of Tim Berners-Lee in 2005:

Tim Berners-Lee in 2005
Tim Berners-Lee in 2005

In 1993, Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Connolly proposed an Internet Draft called "Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)" to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). In this draft version, HTML is described as "A Representation of Textual Information and MetaInformation for Retrieval and Interchange".

In 1995, HTML 2.0 was published as IETF RFC 1866, authored by Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Connolly. In this RFC, HTML is described as: The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a simple markup language used to create hypertext documents that are platform independent. HTML documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are appropriate for representing information from a wide range of domains. HTML markup can represent hypertext news, mail, documentation, and hypermedia; menus of options; database query results; simple structured documents with in-lined graphics; and hypertext views of existing bodies of information.

In 1997, HTML 3.2 was published as a W3C Recommendation. Relative to HTML 2.0, HTML 3.2 adds widely deployed features such as tables, applets, text flow around images, superscripts and subscripts.

Later in 1997, HTML 4.0 was published as a W3C Recommendation to replace HTML 3.2. HTML 4.0 offers 3 variations:

In 1999, HTML 4.01 was as published a W3C Recommendation with minor changes to HTML 4.0.

In 2008, HTML5 was published by the W3C. HTML5 proposed the following changes: Although its syntax closely resembles that of SGML, HTML5 has abandoned any attempt to be an SGML application and has explicitly defined its own "html" serialization, in addition to an alternative XML-based XHTML5 serialization.

In 2017, HTML 5.2 was published as a W3C Recommendation.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

Introduction of HTML

 What Is HTML

History of HTML

 Differences between HTML and XHTML

 Relation between HTML and CSS

 Relation between HTML and JavaScript

 Relation between HTML and DOM

 Relation between HTML and DHTML

 Relation between HTML and SVG

 Relation between HTML and MathML

 Introduction of HTML5 Features

 HTML Document Structure and Content

 HTML Document and Elements Syntax

 Displayed and Printed HTML Documents

 Responsive Design of Web Pages

 MathML Integration in HTML Documents

 References

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