HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE · GRADUATE COURSE · WHATWG LIVING STANDARD
— THE BANANA DOCUMENT ANALOGY —
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) describes the structure and meaning of web content using tags. It is not a programming language — it has no logic, loops, or variables.
The 'HyperText' in HTML refers to hyperlinks — text that links to other documents. This interconnected web of documents is the foundation of the World Wide Web.
HTML is declarative: you describe what content is (a heading, a paragraph, an image), not how to render it. The browser decides the visual presentation based on its default styles and CSS.
HTML is maintained by WHATWG as a Living Standard (not versioned releases). 'HTML5' refers to modern HTML features introduced since 2008, now simply called HTML.
— TIMELINE —
| Version | Year | Key Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| HTML 1.0 | 1991 | Tim Berners-Lee's original proposal at CERN. ~18 tags. |
| HTML 2.0 | 1995 | First formal standard (RFC 1866). Added forms. |
| HTML 3.2 | 1997 | W3C standard. Tables, applets, text flow around images. |
| HTML 4.01 | 1999 | Separated structure from presentation. Introduced CSS support. |
| XHTML 1.0 | 2000 | HTML reformulated as XML. Strict syntax rules. |
| HTML5 | 2014 | WHATWG Living Standard. Semantic elements, video, canvas, APIs. |
| HTML (Living) | 2019+ | WHATWG takes sole stewardship. Continuous updates. |
HTML · HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE · WHATWG LIVING STANDARD · html.spec.whatwg.org