One thing I have always wondered about is how HTML has evolved over time. I am going to take a look at the overall history of HTML and report it back to all my readers. HTML plays a huge part in how we all experience the internet so it’s an important topic to have knowledge on.
HTML —which is short for HyperText Markup Language— is the official language of the World Wide Web and was first conceived in 1990. HTML is a product of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) which is a complex, technical specification describing markup languages, especially those used in electronic document exchange, document management, and document publishing. HTML was originally created to allow those who were not specialized in SGML to publish and exchange scientific and other technical documents. HTML especially facilitated this exchange by incorporating the ability to link documents electronically using hyperlinks. Thus the name Hypertext Markup Language was created. However, it was quickly realized by those outside of the discipline of scientific documentation that HTML was relatively easy to learn, was self contained and lent itself to a number of other applications. With the evolution of the World Wide Web, HTML began to proliferate and quickly spilled over into the mainstream.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C for short) was working steadily along in the background to standardize HTML. Several recommendations were published by the W3C during the late 1990s which represented the official versions of HTML and provided an ongoing comprehensive reference for web authors. Thus the birth of HTML 2.0 in September 1995, HTML 3.2 in January 1997 and HTML 4.01 in December 1999. The releases of new versions of HTML were pretty much every 2 years as you can see so no wonder it rapidly evolved. As the World Wide Web approached adulthood hosting a wide variety of would-be and professional web page authors, it became increasingly apparent that cyberspace was filling up with a lot of badly written HTML.
To remedy this situation, the W3C came up with a more regimental form of HTML with the intention to create a rigid standard to which web authors were encouraged to conform. This was supporting an effort to eventually ‘clean up’ or streamline the World Wide Web and ultimately replace presentational elements such as font with another documentational structure known as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). In theory, once this transformation occurred, the web would place less demand on the next generation of web browsers and most specifically it would accomodate the low processing power of new portable devices such as PDAs. Hence the birth of the next generation of HTML called XHTML, the ‘ X ’ representing that this version of HTML was based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) instead of SGML.
As we move onto XHTML 1.0 we are also seeing new versions of that as well, but people are really starting to create a lot of buzz in the web development word with the talks of HTML 5. HTML 5 is currently still in development under the W3C. HTML 5 is looking to challenge Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight because the new standard incorporates features like video playback and drag-and-drop that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. It will be interesting to see what HTML 5 will allow us to do on the internet especially when some of the biggest names in the technology industry are backing this new standard. People such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, and more are putting great confidence in the new standard that is HTML 5. Time will tell how successful HTML 5 is but I have a great feeling that it will very popular and successful. I hope you all have learned a great deal about the history of the World Wide Web and HTML. Feel free to comment.
