Introduction to HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is used to design web pages using markup language.
HTML is the combination of Hypertext and Markup language.
- Hypertext defines the link between the web pages.
- Markup language is used to define the text document within tag which defines the structure of web pages.
It is noteworthy that HTML is not a programming language, but rather a markup language. Let us find a dividing line between these types of language:
- A markup language is used to control the presentation of data, like “represent these user names as a bullet list or as a table”.
- A programming language is used to transform data. It does so by creating CPU instructions that rewrite the input data into the output; hopefully, the desired output.
Most of markup languages are human readable. Language uses tags to define what manipulation has to be done on the text. HTML is a markup language which is used by the browser to manipulate text, images and other content to display it in required format.
Short History
HTML was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. The first ever version of HTML was HTML 1.0 but the first standard version was HTML 2.0 which was published in 1999.
HTML Version | Year |
---|---|
HTML 1.0 | 1991 |
HTML 2.0 | 1995 |
HTML 3.2 | 1997 |
HTML 4.01 | 1999 |
XHTML | 2000 |
HTML5 | 2014 |
HTML Breakdown
The HTML document can be divided into two sections:
Head Section: The <head> element is a container for all the head elements. <title> (this element is required in an HTML document), <style>, <base>, <link>, <meta>, <script> and <noscript> tag can go inside the <head>
Body Section: The body of HTML document contains the text that is displayed on a web page. The body section is enclosed within <body> tag. It gives a description of the document layout and structure.

HTML Example
below example will demonstrate the basic architecture of HTML Document
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My First HTML Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language</p>
</body>
</html>