What is HTML?
HTML (or Hyper Text Markup Language according to AbbreviationFinder) is the language in which web pages are written. It is a hypertext language, that is, a language that allows you to write text in a structured way, and that is composed of labels, which mark the beginning and end of each element of the document.
A hypertext document is not only made up of text, it can contain image, sound, video, etc., so the result can be considered as a multimedia document. HTML documents must have the extension html or htm, so that they can be viewed in browsers (programs that allow you to view web pages).
The browsers are in charge of interpreting the HTML code of the documents, and of showing the users the web pages resulting from the interpreted code.
Versions
In November of 1995 the HTML 2.0 standard was approved. for creating web pages. It was created with informative objectives, oriented to academic activity, in which the content of the pages was more important than the design.
But this version of HTML lacked many tools to control the design of the pages and add multimedia content, so Netscape (whose browsers were the most used in those years) began to include new tags that did not exist in the standard.
The committee in charge of establishing the standards within the Internet, began work on the draft of a new version of HTML, the draft of HTML 3.0.
But this draft was too long, trying to include many new attributes for existing tags, and creating many other new tags. As a result, it was not well accepted by the market and several companies came together to form a new committee charged with setting HTML standards. This committee was renamed W3C.
In January 1997, the HTML 3.2 standard was approved. This new standard included the improvements provided by the Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator browsers, which had already made extensions to the HTML 2.0 standard.
In December 1997, the HTML 4.0 standard was approved, created to standardize frames, style sheets and scripts.
In September of 2001 the HTML 4.01 standard was approved.
HTML 5
[2] HTML 5 is made up of many different modules, the degree of specification of which is at different levels. Therefore, many of the features of HTML 5 are already ready to be implemented, at a development point that is close to the one that will finally be presented. Many other features are still simply in the pipeline, by way of initial ideas or drafts.
In fact, newer versions of almost all browsers, including the controversial Internet Explorer 8, implement some of the features of HTML 5 ‘. Of course, for a website to look good on all systems, you have to use only those parts that work in all browsers, so that today, few are the really available utilities of the language, if we want to make a site web compatible. In the worst case, however, we can begin to use these features experimentally, if only to rub our hands together in hopes of actually incorporating them into our normal development practices.
What’s new in HTML 5
[2] HTML 5 includes significant new features in a number of areas. It is not only about incorporating new labels or eliminating others, but it involves improvements in areas that until now were outside the language and for which it was necessary to use other technologies.
- Body structure: Most websites have a common format, consisting of elements such as header, footer, browsers, etc. HTML 5 allows you to group all these parts of a website into new tags that will represent each of the typical parts of a page.
- Tags for specific content: Until now, a single tag was used to embed various types of rich content, such as Flash animations or video. Now specific tags will be used for each type of content in particular, such as audio, video, etc.
- Canvas: is a new component that will allow drawing, through the functions of an API, on the page all kinds of shapes, which can be animated and respond to user interaction. It is something like the possibilities that Flash offers us, but within the HTML specification and without the need to have any plugin installed.
- Local databases: the browser will allow the use of a local database, with which it will be possible to work on a web page through the client and through an API. It is something like Cookies, but designed to store large amounts of information, which will allow the creation of web applications that work without the need to be connected to the Internet.
- Web Workers: these are processes that require a lot of processing time by the browser, but that can be done in the background, so that the user does not have to wait for them to finish to start using the page. For this, an API will also be available to work with the Web Workers.
- Offline web applications: There will be another API for working with web applications, which can be developed so that they also work locally and without being connected to the Internet.
- Geolocation: Web pages can be geographically located through an API that allows Geolocation.
- New APIs for user interface: topics as widely used as “drag & drop” in the user interfaces of conventional programs, will be incorporated into HTML 5 by means of an API.
End of presentation tags: all tags that have to do with the presentation of the document, that is, that modify page styles, will be eliminated. The responsibility of defining the appearance of a website will be borne solely by CSS.
