- January 1997
- - HTML 3.2 was published as a W3C Recommendation. It was the first version developed and standardized exclusively by the W3C, as the IETF had closed its HTML Working Group in September 1996.
- Initially code-named "Wilbur" HTML 3.2 dropped math formulas entirely, reconciled overlap among various proprietary extensions and adopted most of Netscape's visual markup tags. Netscape's blink element and Microsoft's marquee element were omitted due to a mutual agreement between the two companies. A markup for mathematical formulas similar to that in HTML was not standardized until 14 months later in Math ML.
- December 1997
- HTML 4.0[16] was
published as a W3C Recommendation . It offers three variations:
- Strict, in which deprecated elements are forbidden,
- Transitional, in which deprecated elements are allowed,
- Frameset, in which mostly only
- Initially code-named "Cougar" HTML 4.0 adopted many browser-specific element types and attributes, but at the same time sought to phase out Netscape's visual markup features by marking them as deprecatedin favor of style sheets. HTML 4 is an SGML application conforming to ISO 8879 – SGML.
- April 1998
- HTML 4.0 [18] was reissued with minor edits without incrementing the version number.
- December 1999
- HTML 4.01 was published as a W3C Recommendation. It offers the same three variations as HTML 4.0 and its last errata were published May 12, 2001.
- May 2000
- ISO/IEC 15445:2000 (" ISO HTML", based on HTML 4.01 Strict) was published as an ISO/IEC international standard. In the ISO this standard falls in the domain of the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 (ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 34 – Document description and processing languages).
- As of mid-2008, HTML 4.01 and ISO/IEC 15445:2000 are the most recent versions of HTML. Development of the parallel, XML-based language XHTML occupied the W3C's HTML Working Group through the early and mid-2000s.
HTML or HyperText Markup Language is the main markup language for creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser.
HTML is written in the form of HTML
elements consisting of tags enclosed
in angle
brackets (like <html>),
within the web page content. HTML tags most commonly come in pairs
like <h1> and </h1>,
although some tags represent empty
elements and so are
unpaired, for example <img>.
The first tag in a pair is the start
tag, and the second tag is the end
tag (they are also
called opening tags and closing
tags). In between these tags web designers can add text, further
tags, comments and
other types of text-based content.
The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.
HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can embedscripts written in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML web pages.
Web browsers can also refer to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the look and layout of text and other material. The W3C, maintainer of both the HTML and the CSS standards, encourages the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML.[1]
