Is html a high level language

".htm" and ".html" redirect here. For other uses, see HTM.

HTML
[HyperText Markup Language]Filename extensionInternet media typeType codeUniform Type Identifier [UTI]Developed byInitial releaseLatest releaseType of formatContainer forContained byExtended fromExtended toOpen format?Website

The official logo of the latest version, HTML5[1]

.html .htm

text/html

TEXT

public.html

WHATWG

1993; 29 years ago

Living Standard 2022

Document file format

HTML elements

Web browser

SGML

XHTML

Yes

html.spec.whatwg.org

The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets [CSS] and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

Web browsers receive HTML documents from a web server or from local storage and render the documents into multimedia web pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues for the appearance of the document.

HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images and other objects such as interactive forms may be embedded into the rendered page. HTML provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. HTML elements are delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as and directly introduce content into the page. Other tags such as surround and provide information about document text and may include other tags as sub-elements. Browsers do not display the HTML tags but use them to interpret the content of the page.

HTML can embed programs written in a scripting language such as JavaScript, which affects the behavior and content of web pages. Inclusion of CSS defines the look and layout of content. The World Wide Web Consortium [W3C], former maintainer of the HTML and current maintainer of the CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML since 1997.[2] A form of HTML, known as HTML5, is used to display video and audio, primarily using the element, in collaboration with javascript.

History

Development

In 1980, physicist Tim Berners-Lee, a contractor at CERN, proposed and prototyped ENQUIRE, a system for CERN researchers to use and share documents. In 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a memo proposing an Internet-based hypertext system.[3] Berners-Lee specified HTML and wrote the browser and server software in late 1990. That year, Berners-Lee and CERN data systems engineer Robert Cailliau collaborated on a joint request for funding, but the project was not formally adopted by CERN. In his personal notes[4] from 1990 he listed[5] "some of the many areas in which hypertext is used" and put an encyclopedia first.

The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called "HTML Tags", first mentioned on the Internet by Tim Berners-Lee in late 1991.[6][7] It describes 18 elements comprising the initial, relatively simple design of HTML. Except for the hyperlink tag, these were strongly influenced by SGMLguid, an in-house Standard Generalized Markup Language [SGML]-based documentation format at CERN. Eleven of these elements still exist in HTML 4.[8]

HTML is a markup language that web browsers use to interpret and compose text, images, and other material into visual or audible web pages. Default characteristics for every item of HTML markup are defined in the browser, and these characteristics can be altered or enhanced by the web page designer's additional use of CSS. Many of the text elements are found in the 1988 ISO technical report TR 9537 Techniques for using SGML, which in turn covers the features of early text formatting languages such as that used by the RUNOFF command developed in the early 1960s for the CTSS [Compatible Time-Sharing System] operating system: these formatting commands were derived from the commands used by typesetters to manually format documents. However, the SGML concept of generalized markup is based on elements [nested annotated ranges with attributes] rather than merely print effects, with also the separation of structure and markup; HTML has been progressively moved in this direction with CSS.

Berners-Lee considered HTML to be an application of SGML. It was formally defined as such by the Internet Engineering Task Force [IETF] with the mid-1993 publication of the first proposal for an HTML specification, the "Hypertext Markup Language [HTML]" Internet Draft by Berners-Lee and Dan Connolly, which included an SGML Document type definition to define the grammar.[9][10] The draft expired after six months, but was notable for its acknowledgment of the NCSA Mosaic browser's custom tag for embedding in-line images, reflecting the IETF's philosophy of basing standards on successful prototypes. Similarly, Dave Raggett's competing Internet-Draft, "HTML+ [Hypertext Markup Format]", from late 1993, suggested standardizing already-implemented features like tables and fill-out forms.[11]

After the HTML and HTML+ drafts expired in early 1994, the IETF created an HTML Working Group, which in 1995 completed "HTML 2.0", the first HTML specification intended to be treated as a standard against which future implementations should be based.[12]

Further development under the auspices of the IETF was stalled by competing interests. Since 1996, the HTML specifications have been maintained, with input from commercial software vendors, by the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C].[13] However, in 2000, HTML also became an international standard [ISO/IEC 15445:2000]. HTML 4.01 was published in late 1999, with further errata published through 2001. In 2004, development began on HTML5 in the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group [WHATWG], which became a joint deliverable with the W3C in 2008, and completed and standardized on 28 October 2014.[14]

HTML versions timeline

HTML 2

November 24, 1995HTML 2.0 was published as RFC 1866. Supplemental RFCs added capabilities:

• November 25, 1995: RFC 1867 [form-based file upload]
• May 1996: RFC 1942 [tables]
• August 1996: RFC 1980 [client-side image maps]
• January 1997: RFC 2070 [internationalization]

HTML 3

January 14, 1997HTML 3.2[15] was published as a W3C Recommendation. It was the first version developed and standardized exclusively by the W3C, as the IETF had closed its HTML Working Group on September 12, 1996.[16]Initially code-named "Wilbur",[17] HTML 3.2 dropped math formulas entirely, reconciled overlap among various proprietary extensions and adopted most of Netscape's visual markup tags. Netscape's blink element and Microsoft's marquee element were omitted due to a mutual agreement between the two companies.[13] A markup for mathematical formulas similar to that in HTML was not standardized until 14 months later in MathML.

HTML 4

December 18, 1997HTML 4.0[18] was published as a W3C Recommendation. It offers three variations:

• Strict, in which deprecated elements are forbidden
• Transitional, in which deprecated elements are allowed
• Frameset, in which mostly only frame related elements are allowed.

Initially code-named "Cougar",[17] HTML 4.0 adopted many browser-specific element types and attributes, but at the same time sought to phase out Netscape's visual markup features by marking them as deprecated in favor of style sheets. HTML 4 is an SGML application conforming to ISO 8879 – SGML.[19]April 24, 1998HTML 4.0[20] was reissued with minor edits without incrementing the version number.December 24, 1999HTML 4.01[21] was published as a W3C Recommendation. It offers the same three variations as HTML 4.0 and its last errata were published on May 12, 2001.May 2000ISO/IEC 15445:2000[22][23] ["ISO HTML", based on HTML 4.01 Strict] was published as an ISO/IEC international standard. In the ISO this standard falls in the domain of the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 [ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 34 – Document description and processing languages].[22]After HTML 4.01, there was no new version of HTML for many years as development of the parallel, XML-based language XHTML occupied the W3C's HTML Working Group through the early and mid-2000s.

HTML 5

October 28, 2014HTML5[24] was published as a W3C Recommendation.[25]November 1, 2016HTML 5.1[26] was published as a W3C Recommendation.[27][28]December 14, 2017HTML 5.2[29] was published as a W3C Recommendation.[30][31]

HTML draft version timeline

October 1991HTML Tags,[6] an informal CERN document listing 18 HTML tags, was first mentioned in public.June 1992First informal draft of the HTML DTD,[32] with seven[33][34][35] subsequent revisions [July 15, August 6, August 18, November 17, November 19, November 20, November 22]November 1992HTML DTD 1.1 [the first with a version number, based on RCS revisions, which start with 1.1 rather than 1.0], an informal draft[35]June 1993Hypertext Markup Language[36] was published by the IETF IIIR Working Group as an Internet Draft [a rough proposal for a standard]. It was replaced by a second version[37] one month later.November 1993HTML+ was published by the IETF as an Internet Draft and was a competing proposal to the Hypertext Markup Language draft. It expired in July 1994.[38]November 1994First draft [revision 00] of HTML 2.0 published by IETF itself[39] [called as "HTML 2.0" from revision 02[40]], that finally led to publication of RFC 1866 in November 1995.[41]April 1995 [authored March 1995]HTML 3.0[42] was proposed as a standard to the IETF, but the proposal expired five months later [28 September 1995][43] without further action. It included many of the capabilities that were in Raggett's HTML+ proposal, such as support for tables, text flow around figures and the display of complex mathematical formulas.[43]W3C began development of its own Arena browser as a test bed for HTML 3 and Cascading Style Sheets,[44][45][46] but HTML 3.0 did not succeed for several reasons. The draft was considered very large at 150 pages and the pace of browser development, as well as the number of interested parties, had outstripped the resources of the IETF.[13] Browser vendors, including Microsoft and Netscape at the time, chose to implement different subsets of HTML 3's draft features as well as to introduce their own extensions to it.[13] [see Browser wars]. These included extensions to control stylistic aspects of documents, contrary to the "belief [of the academic engineering community] that such things as text color, background texture, font size and font face were definitely outside the scope of a language when their only intent was to specify how a document would be organized."[13] Dave Raggett, who has been a W3C Fellow for many years, has commented for example: "To a certain extent, Microsoft built its business on the Web by extending HTML features."[13]

January 2008HTML5 was published as a Working Draft by the W3C.[47]Although its syntax closely resembles that of SGML, HTML5 has abandoned any attempt to be an SGML application and has explicitly defined its own "html" serialization, in addition to an alternative XML-based XHTML5 serialization.[48]2011 HTML5 – Last CallOn 14 February 2011, the W3C extended the charter of its HTML Working Group with clear milestones for HTML5. In May 2011, the working group advanced HTML5 to "Last Call", an invitation to communities inside and outside W3C to confirm the technical soundness of the specification. The W3C developed a comprehensive test suite to achieve broad interoperability for the full specification by 2014, which was the target date for recommendation.[49] In January 2011, the WHATWG renamed its "HTML5" living standard to "HTML". The W3C nevertheless continues its project to release HTML5.[50]2012 HTML5 – Candidate RecommendationIn July 2012, WHATWG and W3C decided on a degree of separation. W3C will continue the HTML5 specification work, focusing on a single definitive standard, which is considered as a "snapshot" by WHATWG. The WHATWG organization will continue its work with HTML5 as a "Living Standard". The concept of a living standard is that it is never complete and is always being updated and improved. New features can be added but functionality will not be removed.[51]In December 2012, W3C designated HTML5 as a Candidate Recommendation.[52] The criterion for advancement to W3C Recommendation is "two 100% complete and fully interoperable implementations".[53]2014 HTML5 – Proposed Recommendation and RecommendationIn September 2014, W3C moved HTML5 to Proposed Recommendation.[54]On 28 October 2014, HTML5 was released as a stable W3C Recommendation,[55] meaning the specification process is complete.[56]

XHTML versions

XHTML is a separate language that began as a reformulation of HTML 4.01 using XML 1.0. It is no longer being developed as a separate standard.

• XHTML 1.0 was published as a W3C Recommendation on January 26, 2000,[57] and was later revised and republished on August 1, 2002. It offers the same three variations as HTML 4.0 and 4.01, reformulated in XML, with minor restrictions.
• XHTML 1.1[58] was published as a W3C Recommendation on May 31, 2001. It is based on XHTML 1.0 Strict, but includes minor changes, can be customized, and is reformulated using modules in the W3C recommendation "Modularization of XHTML", which was published on April 10, 2001.[59]
• XHTML 2.0 was a working draft, work on it was abandoned in 2009 in favor of work on HTML5 and XHTML5.[60][61][62] XHTML 2.0 was incompatible with XHTML 1.x and, therefore, would be more accurately characterized as an XHTML-inspired new language than an update to XHTML 1.x.
• An XHTML syntax, known as "XHTML5.1", is being defined alongside HTML5 in the HTML5 draft.[63]

Transition of HTML Publication to WHATWG

On 28 May 2019, the W3C announced that WHATWG would be the sole publisher of the HTML and DOM standards.[64][65][66][67] The W3C and WHATWG had been publishing competing standards since 2012. While the W3C standard was identical to the WHATWG in 2007 the standards have since progressively diverged due to different design decisions.[68] The WHATWG "Living Standard" had been the de facto web standard for some time.[69]

Markup

HTML markup consists of several key components, including those called tags [and their attributes], character-based data types, character references and entity references. HTML tags most commonly come in pairs like and , although some represent empty elements and so are unpaired, for example . The first tag in such a pair is the start tag, and the second is the end tag [they are also called opening tags and closing tags].

Another important component is the HTML document type declaration, which triggers standards mode rendering.

The following is an example of the classic "Hello, World!" program:

  
    This is a title
  
  
    
        Hello world!
    
  

The text between and describes the web page, and the text between and is the visible page content. The markup text This is a title defines the browser page title shown on browser tabs and window titles, and the tag defines a division of the page used for easy styling. Between and , a element can be used to define webpage metadata.

The Document Type Declaration is for HTML5. If a declaration is not included, various browsers will revert to "quirks mode" for rendering.[70]

Elements

HTML element content categories

HTML documents imply a structure of nested HTML elements. These are indicated in the document by HTML tags, enclosed in angle brackets thus: .[71][better source needed]

In the simple, general case, the extent of an element is indicated by a pair of tags: a "start tag" and "end tag" . The text content of the element, if any, is placed between these tags.

Tags may also enclose further tag markup between the start and end, including a mixture of tags and text. This indicates further [nested] elements, as children of the parent element.

The start tag may also include element's attributes within the tag. These indicate other information, such as identifiers for sections within the document, identifiers used to bind style information to the presentation of the document, and for some tags such as the used to embed images, the reference to the image resource in the format like this:

Some elements, such as the line break , or do not permit any embedded content, either text or further tags. These require only a single empty tag [akin to a start tag] and do not use an end tag.

Many tags, particularly the closing end tag for the very commonly used paragraph element , are optional. An HTML browser or other agent can infer the closure for the end of an element from the context and the structural rules defined by the HTML standard. These rules are complex and not widely understood by most HTML coders.

The general form of an HTML element is therefore: ''content''. Some HTML elements are defined as empty elements and take the form . Empty elements may enclose no content, for instance, the tag or the inline tag. The name of an HTML element is the name used in the tags. Note that the end tag's name is preceded by a slash character, /, and that in empty elements the end tag is neither required nor allowed. If attributes are not mentioned, default values are used in each case.

Element examples

Header of the HTML document: .... The title is included in the head, for example:

  The Title
   

Headings

HTML headings are defined with the to tags with H1 being the highest [or most important] level and H6 the least:

Heading level 1
Heading level 2
Heading level 3
Heading level 4
Heading level 5
Heading level 6

The effects are:

Heading Level 1

Heading Level 2

Heading Level 3

Heading Level 4

Heading Level 5

Heading Level 6

Note that CSS can drastically change the rendering.

Paragraphs:

Paragraph 1 Paragraph 2

Line breaks:

. The difference between and is that breaks a line without altering the semantic structure of the page, whereas sections the page into paragraphs. The element is an empty element in that, although it may have attributes, it can take no content and it may not have an end tag.

This  is a paragraph  with  line breaks

This is a link in HTML. To create a link the tag is used. The href attribute holds the URL address of the link.

A link to Wikipedia!

Inputs:

There are many possible ways a user can give input/s like:

Comments:

Comments can help in the understanding of the markup and do not display in the webpage.

There are several types of markup elements used in HTML:

Structural markup indicates the purpose of textFor example, Golf establishes "Golf" as a second-level heading. Structural markup does not denote any specific rendering, but most web browsers have default styles for element formatting. Content may be further styled using Cascading Style Sheets [CSS].[72]Presentational markup indicates the appearance of the text, regardless of its purposeFor example, bold text indicates that visual output devices should render "boldface" in bold text, but gives little indication what devices that are unable to do this [such as aural devices that read the text aloud] should do. In the case of both bold text and italic text, there are other elements that may have equivalent visual renderings but that are more semantic in nature, such as strong text and emphasized text respectively. It is easier to see how an aural user agent should interpret the latter two elements. However, they are not equivalent to their presentational counterparts: it would be undesirable for a screen-reader to emphasize the name of a book, for instance, but on a screen such a name would be italicized. Most presentational markup elements have become deprecated under the HTML 4.0 specification in favor of using CSS for styling.Hypertext markup makes parts of a document into links to other documentsAn anchor element creates a hyperlink in the document and its href attribute sets the link's target URL. For example, the HTML markup Wikipedia, will render the word "Wikipedia" as a hyperlink. To render an image as a hyperlink, an img element is inserted as content into the a element. Like br, img is an empty element with attributes but no content or closing tag. .

Attributes

Most of the attributes of an element are name–value pairs, separated by = and written within the start tag of an element after the element's name. The value may be enclosed in single or double quotes, although values consisting of certain characters can be left unquoted in HTML [but not XHTML].[73][74] Leaving attribute values unquoted is considered unsafe.[75] In contrast with name-value pair attributes, there are some attributes that affect the element simply by their presence in the start tag of the element,[6] like the ismap attribute for the img element.[76]

There are several common attributes that may appear in many elements :

• The id attribute provides a document-wide unique identifier for an element. This is used to identify the element so that stylesheets can alter its presentational properties, and scripts may alter, animate or delete its contents or presentation. Appended to the URL of the page, it provides a globally unique identifier for the element, typically a sub-section of the page. For example, the ID "Attributes" in //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML#Attributes.
• The class attribute provides a way of classifying similar elements. This can be used for semantic or presentation purposes. For example, an HTML document might semantically use the designation to indicate that all elements with this class value are subordinate to the main text of the document. In presentation, such elements might be gathered together and presented as footnotes on a page instead of appearing in the place where they occur in the HTML source. Class attributes are used semantically in microformats. Multiple class values may be specified; for example puts the element into both the notation and the important classes.
• An author may use the style attribute to assign presentational properties to a particular element. It is considered better practice to use an element's id or class attributes to select the element from within a stylesheet, though sometimes this can be too cumbersome for a simple, specific, or ad hoc styling.
• The title attribute is used to attach subtextual explanation to an element. In most browsers this attribute is displayed as a tooltip.
• The lang attribute identifies the natural language of the element's contents, which may be different from that of the rest of the document. For example, in an English-language document:

  Oh well, c'est la vie, as they say in France.
  

The abbreviation element, abbr, can be used to demonstrate some of these attributes:

HTML

This example displays as HTML; in most browsers, pointing the cursor at the abbreviation should display the title text "Hypertext Markup Language."

Most elements take the language-related attribute dir to specify text direction, such as with "rtl" for right-to-left text in, for example, Arabic, Persian or Hebrew.[77]

Character and entity references

As of version 4.0, HTML defines a set of 252 character entity references and a set of 1,114,050 numeric character references, both of which allow individual characters to be written via simple markup, rather than literally. A literal character and its markup counterpart are considered equivalent and are rendered identically.

The ability to "escape" characters in this way allows for the characters