As the current generation is expanding, more and more people are using the internet. When the average person goes onto any web page, they more than likely think of it as a page with text and pictures. In my fair opinion, I believe that people should know what HTML is. So, in this article I will be explaining the basic markup and a brief history of HTML.

HTML stands for Hyper-text Markup Language, and is virtually the backbone of web pages. Alongside HTML, there are a few other programming languages. Such as CSS, jQuery, JavaScript, and PHP. Each of these programming languages helps make up websites. Like I mentioned a moment ago, there is another main element called CSS, or Cascading Style Sheet. CSS makes up the “formal wear” of a website. Such as colors, styles, fonts, pictures, etc.

One of the first version of HTML used, HTML 2.0 was created in late 1995. HTML was first created by a physicist Tim Berners-Lee. During this time, there really wasn’t much that could have been done with HTML. Tables and columns made up websites. Over a course of a few years, HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.0 were issued. Currently, HTML 4.0 is the main HTML version that is being used.

When it comes to making a website, you have to have the basic knowledge of both HTML and CSS to really get anywhere.  HTML code is built up of something called tags. Tags are surrounding by greater than “>” and less than “<” signs. The following is the basic markup for a website:

<html>

<title>WebPage</title>

<body>

<p>This is a paragraph tag</p>

</body>

</html>

For some, the above can be very simple or even very confusing. But in reality, that is possible one of the simplest pieces of HTML code one can write. For those who have no knowledge of HTML, I will briefly explain what each piece of code does:

<html> and </html>  – These two tags must be in the document for the code to be read. Anything inside these two tags will be displayed.

<title> and </title> – This piece of code are self-explainable. Whatever is between these two pieces of code will show at the top where the tab is.

<body> and </body> – Any code that is between these two tags will show to the user/visitor. Such as paragraph tags, forms, etc.

<p> and </p> – This is the paragraph tag. Any text in between this will show to the user.

I hope this article helped explain the basic markup of website, and helped explain what HTML is.

This short-intro of HTML was presented by Nick. His blog is located here.