Hypertext markup language, or HTML, consists of a set of instructions for the creation of display pages on browsers, which made the World Wide Web possible. By the mid-1990’s, HTML embedded codes that defined fonts, layouts, graphics, and hypertext links provided a standard protocol that allowed Web page designers to distribute content to any computer.
Tim Berners-Lee, while working as a software engineering consultant at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN; later known as the Organisation Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland, was attempting to organize laboratory research documents and statistics from incompatible computer systems submitted by physicists from around the world. In order to pool all of these files for sharing information, Berners-Lee developed a set of formatting codes to work with hypertext protocol by linking text within the files. Hypertext enables the computer user to cross-reference information and link formats together through multiple gateways on the World Wide Web. Each page is provided with a unique location address known as a universal document locator (URL). Robert Cailliau, who worked in the Office Computing Systems, Data Handling Division, at CERN, collaborated with Berners-Lee to get the Web under way. Cailliau’s contributions were essential to the development of the Web. He rewrote the original proposal, lobbied administrators for funding, presented papers at conferences, and got programmers to work on the project.
Berners-Lee derived hypertext markup language (HTML) from standard generalized markup languageStandard generalized markup language (SGML),
There are three types of markup language. The first type is procedural, or specific, markup, which provides visual clues for text formatting and indicates printing instructions to the processing system. The second type is descriptive, or generalized, markup, which informs the system of document components and layout, such as headings or paragraph designations. The final type of markup language, content, identifies various portions of the document that specify the speaker or types of speech. Markup codes are not visible when the document is displayed on the browser. HTML unifies elements and attributes using various tags and symbols.
The basic HTML markup statements are tags delimited by pairs of angle brackets. HTML tags contain elements that tell the browser a tag is starting or ending. The head tags indicate to the browser how to display elements of a document, such as font size, color, and title. The body will denote where paragraphs begin or end. The slash mark indicates the end of a section or page. HTML also applies attributes, such as “href,” that note a hypertext reference, allowing users to click a link that takes them to another Web site or page. Markup creation had been a tedious process that was prone to human error, but with the advent of HTML editor programs, the insertion of elements, tags, and attributes was made faster and easier. An example of a basic document done in HTML is as follows:
The World Wide Web became a global, economic, and social phenomenon by the end of the 1990’s. However, American businesses shied away from the Internet in the early part of the decade, believing that it would be used only for research in the academic environment. In 1994, Berners-Lee, who was now working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to promote guidelines regarding the growth of network infrastructure and strict language syntax with HTML, especially with the emerging browser battles between Netscape and Microsoft Explorer.
HTML promoted interoperability, causing Internet traffic to explode. Search engines had difficulty trying to track all of the pages found on the Web. Companies soon embraced the World Wide Web for commercial ventures, and in response, HTML continued to improve support. Browsers adopted cascading style sheets to improve document appearance. Dynamic HTML added capabilities to respond interactively with JavaScript. Extensible markup language (XML), a relative of HTML, created additional tags to identify structures and relationships within a document. XML had two important features. First, Web page creators had more flexibility to create their own tags. Second, XML separated content from formatting through the use of sophisticated style sheets, ensuring that all data structures and relationships were identified within the XML tags in which they were enclosed. XML made search engines more powerful for cataloging contents, enabling computers to become even more interactive and responsive to user actions.
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