The History of HTML

HTML is the standard language of internet, and it is the fundamental part of

World Wide Web. It is a shorten form of Hypertext Markup Language. Hypertext has
a characteristic that enables to embed hyper links to the suggested area or position
on a hypertext, and that makes one document possible to refer other documents or
objects. The referenced documents also can connect to others and so on. This
systematic way of written language allows people to reach the infinite number of
documents from just a document. Therefore, HTML is highly informative document
for users who seek specific information since user can reach just clicking the
hyperlinks for extended information such as pictures, sounds, movie clips, and other
text data.
HTML uses tag to markup the hypertext for computers to understand its
structure, layout, and font decorations. The base of the document is a text, which is
editable by default computer program comes with OS, therefore as long as you know
the tags, you can write HTML without any specific coding applications. One of the
most significant capabilities of HTML is the cross-platforms that means HTML can
be displayed in any kind of platforms rendered through web browsers. It doesnt
matter what kind of device you have as long as that device has a browser.
The history of HTML started in 1989 in Geneva, Switzerland by a man who
worked for the organization called the European Organization for Nuclear Research
a.k.a. CERN. His name is Tim Berners-Lee who made the greatest invention in the
history, and his invention changed the world today. He developed HTML for
organizing and sharing enormous amount of research papers and references with
other staff in the same organization. He designed very simple but powerful ways to
distribute information. His invention was not only HTML but also WWW (World
Wide Web) for infrastructure of HTML, HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to
transmit HTML within WWW, and URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) which is
basically the address to locate hyper text.

In 1993, a student of University of Illinoi developed the browser called

Mosaic. There were other browsers at that time but Mosaic was the first browser
had capability to display an image data. Mosaic was the trigger to popularize HTML
and WWW explosively and increased web users all over the world. Unfortunately,
Mosaic had discontinued development as the result of Browser wars in 1990s,
although some parts of its coding are inherited to Firefox as we know today.
Tim Berners-Lee founded World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, in 1994. The
early era of HTML didnt have any strict standard. After the successful launch of
Mosaic, many company started developing their own browsers and tags to
implement their own browsers. This became the problem for both users and web
designers because users couldnt be presented HTML data in designers intended
ways due to the difference of the interpretation of the tags by browsers. W3C is
established for standardizing format of HTML, and to correct the pathways of HTML
in the future.
In 1994, W3C proposed CSS. CSS is a shorten form of Cascading Style Sheet.
The purpose of CSS is to separate the tags used to decoration the webpage. By
introduction of CSS, HTML file became much cleaner and lighter because most tags
not related to main contents are removed from HTML files. CSS file can be shared
with any other HTML files to format in the same manner by calling the same CSS file
in the header of HTML. The application of CSS to HTML also helped web designers to
make a web pages with consistent design and layout within the same site. In 1998,
W3C also proposed XML, Extensible Markup Language which gives meaning on data
for computers, not human, to understand. In very brief explanation, XML makes
program to understand which data to use. Apples very popular application, iTunes,
uses XML for its playlist. In 2000, W3C proposed XHTML that newer version of Web
written language based on XML.
Thus HTML was established an evolved. After several revision of existing
standards plus new appearance of standards, HTML 5 is becoming the mainstream
of Internet. HTML5 uses more simplified but sophisticated coding than ever. It has
been expanded the usability of multimedia on web pages. HTML5 enables to present

movie, sound, and picture without rendering any plug-ins such as flash player that
used to be called whenever user attempted to play it on a browser. Most
importantly, majority of smartphones and tablets sold today support HTML5. Many
people use Internet to check news, watch movie clips, and listen music through their
mobile devices at any time anywhere. Some business people access their companies
systems to work on a project and respond to others. A lot of thing can be done by
not only computers but also cell phones, tablet or any other devices with has
browser functions as the result of HTML5. The development of HTML and WWW
will never ends and keep improving to make our life more interesting, convenient,
and efficient.
References
World Wide Web Foundation. History of the web. Retrieved from
http://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/
The history of browsers. Retrieved from
http://kogures.com/hitoshi/history/browser/index.html
CSS Layout. Retrieved from
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hatakeyama/design/csslayout/column/history.html
Japan Tech Blog. The summary of HTML5. Retrieved from
http://techblog.yahoo.co.jp/html5/html5/