(HyperText Markup Language) The document format used on the Web. Web pages are built with HTML tags, which are codes embedded in the text. The tags define the page layout, fonts and hypertext links to other documents on the Web. Each link contains the URL (the address) of a Web page residing on the same server or any server worldwide, hence "World Wide" Web." The HTML also defines all the graphic elements used on the page, which are separate files on a local or remote server.
HTML 2.0 was defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with a basic set of features, including interactive forms. Subsequent versions added more features such as blinking text, custom backgrounds and tables of contents. With each new version of HTML, Web browsers must be updated to take advantage of the new codes. See HTML tag.
HTML Is Not a Programming Language
HTML is a markup language (the ML in HTML) that uses a fixed set of markup tags. A markup language can also be thought of as a "presentation language," but it is not a programming language. You cannot "if this-do that" like you can in Java, JavaScript or C++. However, in order to make pages interactive, programming code can be embedded in an HTML page. For example, JavaScript code is widely used alongside the HTML code to make the Web page function like an application. See JavaScript and VBScript.
HTML was originally conceived as a simple markup language to render research documents on the Web. No one envisioned Web pages turning into multimedia applications, but HTML pages have been reworked and jury-rigged to make them function as such. As a result, the source code behind some of today's Web pages is often a complex concoction of tags and scripting.
HTML5
A major attempt to standardize HTML as a Web application platform is HTML Version 5. It consolidates features and adds numerous programming functions (see HTML5). See HTML tag, XML, XHTML and SGML.
Accessing a Web document requires typing in the address, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator), of the home page in your Web browser. The home page is an HTML document, which contains hypertext links to other HTML documents that can be stored on the same server or on a server anywhere in the world.
Web browsers communicate with Web servers via the TCP/IP protocol. The browser sends HTTP requests to the server, which responds with HTML pages and possibly additional programs in the form of ActiveX controls or Java applets.
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