What Does HyperText Markup Language (HTML) Mean?
When you add markup symbols or codes to a file you want to show on the Internet, you use HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The markup tells web computers how to show the text and pictures on a web page.
People sometimes call each piece of markup code that is between “<” and “>” characters an “element,” but most people call them “tags.” Some parts come in pairs, telling the display what effect to start and stop on.
How to Understand HTML
HyperText Markup Language is a computer language that makes it easier to make websites. Every language has code words and grammar, and this one is no different. It’s pretty easy to understand, and as time goes on, it gets more powerful in what it can do. As part of the World Wide Web Consortium, which creates and manages HTML, the language keeps changing to meet the needs of the Internet. For example, with the move to Web 2.0, HTML is now more flexible than ever.
Hypertext is how people use the Internet to move around. Hyperlinks are pieces of text that take people to new pages when they click on them. Hyper means that it is not straight, so users can go anywhere online by clicking on any of the links. HTML tags classify the text inside them as a specific type of text. Markup text might look like heavy fonts or highlighted text to draw attention to a certain word or phrase.
How to Use HyperText Markup Language
If you put many shortcodes into a text file, that’s all HTML is. Because of these tags, HTML can do things. You can use an online browser to read the text after saving it as an HTML file. The codes the author used to write what is seen tell the computer how to read the file and turn the text into a form that can be seen. When someone writes HTML, they need to use tags properly to make their ideas come to life.
The tags are what make HTML code different from plain text. If you put words between angle brackets, which make graphics, pictures, and tables appear on a website, you’re using tags. Various tags have various jobs to do. These are the most basic tags that arrange text. Using JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can help make web pages more interactive. JavaScript gives plain HTML more power, and CSS makes web pages more accessible to everyone.
XML vs. HTML
XML, or Extensible Markup Language, lets people create their markup, which HTML does not. In XML, for example, one user might choose to use the tag to show a reference, and another might choose to use it.
When using HTML, you can only use one pre-defined tag to show certain information. Authors make XML files simple to read using user-defined tags and only include text and code.
Conclusion
- HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, is web computers’ primary coding language to show web pages.
- Clicking on a link in HyperText takes the user to the new page that the link refers to.
- Early versions of HTML (Web 1.0) were rigid, but later versions (Web 2.0 and 3.0) have a lot of dynamic freedom.
- Content is everything else, and markup is the text between two pointing marks (e.g.).