What is HTML?

Posted on: 29 April, 2009

HTML is another technological acronym and stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML is one of the main standards on which the internet is built. Almost all pages that you see on the web will use HTML in some way. There are lots of different types of HTML, this can be confusing for anyone trying to understand it.

If you see people make reference to something called XHTML do not panic! This is one of the aforementioned varieties of HTML that has become prevalent as the web has matured. HTML is relatively easy to learn, and there are lots of tools available for creating web pages without the need to even see the code that is being written. A good example of such a program would be Dreamweaver by Adobe. At the other end of the spectrum many people (myself included!) prefer to write the code that will make up their web pages as they feel that this method will give them more control. These programs are often known simply as text editors, and my personal favourite is Textmate for the Mac. Although HTML is quite easy to use, the art of writing elegant HTML is more difficult to master than many people think. Many of the web pages that you see every day will develop problems because of poorly written HTML.

For more detailed information check this page on Wikipedia.