What is HTML?

HTML is an abbreviation for HyperText Markup Language.

HTML is a language that defines tags to give meaning to content such as text, graphics and video so that software can predictably use the content.

For example a paragraph is denoted using two p HTML tags:

<p>This is text that is defined as a paragraph using the p HTML tag.</p>

This example defines an image to display using the img HTML tag:

<img src="snow-fort.png" alt="Fort made of snow">

This course is covers the HTML language and how to use its tags.

Is HTML programming?

HTML is not a programming language but has rules you need to follow like any computer programming language. So as you create or edit the contents of an HTML document you are considered to be coding but less likely to be considered programming or a programmer.

What is a HTML Document?

A HTML document is plain text that includes the HTML tags and text content. An HTML document can be stored in a file or be generated dynamically from a computer program.

What is a Web Page?

A web page is created from an HTML Document using a Web Browser.

What is a Web Browser?

A web browser is software that can render a web page from an HTML document. It can arrange text, graphics and video using the HTML tags in the HTML document. It can allow a user to interact with content such as using buttons and hyperlinks using HTML tags defined in the HTML document.

Popular web browsers are Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Safar, Firfox and Opera.

What is a Web Browser Engine?

The engine is a fancy way of naming the software that does the core functions of a web browser such as fetching HTML documents and displaying them. It generally excludes a web browser's distinctive look and feel characteristics such as user interface items like a menu or toolbar.

More well known web browser engines are WebKit, Gecko, Trident, Blink and EdgeHTML. For example WebKit is used in the Safari web browser.

Depending on the software licensing, more than one web browser may use the same engine. As well a web browser engine may be used inside of other software and services that need web browser functionality such as computer operating systems and apps on smart devices.

Web Browsers and HTML

You normally view an HTML document as a web page. However web browsers can show you the plain text contents of an HTML document. You call this viewing the source and will include all the HTML tags, text and links to files such as graphics, video or other web pages. This is useful for web development workers such as web designers, web developers and programmers as well as you as student learning to create HTML documents. You will work with the HTML document source throughout the course.

Search Engines and HTML

Search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckgo use software that finds and reads HTML documents. They determine the nature of the content for ranking and storing in searchable database with a reference to the location of the document's source which is typically a publicly accessible URL.

What is a URL?

URL is an abbreviation for Uniform Resource Location. It is what you see in the address bar of your web browser. A URL identifies a unique source for a file.

Social Media and HTML

Social media software like Facebook and Google Plus scrape from the HTML document content such as a title, description and image to show in posts that you may see in news feed along with the URL.

All these software programs need a predictable guide to what the content means. An HTML document provides that using the content tagging language HTML.

World Wide Web Consortium

Abbreviated as W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium is an international community that works with the public and its members to develop standards for the Web.

HTML is an open source specification maintained by the W3C. Open source means that HTML is freely available to use by anyone. Developers that write software rely on the W3C for direction and specifications for HTML.

HTML Versions

HTML is always evolving and has a history marked by versions. Current version is called HTML5. This course focuses on the parts of HTML that work under the HTML5 version and most recent versions before HTML5.

Your main concern with versions of HTML is that the software used to present your HTML document to your audience handles the HTML tags that you use. This software is typically web browsers. Web browsers get updated to work with any new or changed items in the newest versions of HTML.

However some organizations may not update web browsers on their computers and devices. If your target audience critical to you are in those organizations, you need test your HTML documents for those web browser versions.

This course assumes all audiences who have current web browsers supporting HTML5. This is a reasonable assumption because security updates give a strong incentive to the public to update their web browsers.