What is HTML?
~ Yogesh Patidar
The full form of HTML is “Hypertext Markup Language”. It is a standard markup language used to create a web-page or website. There are many tags available to design a website or web-page in HTML, with the help of which we can design a web-page.
Hyper Text:
Hypertext means “one text within another text”. The link available in any text is called Hypertext. You must have seen in many web-pages that some links are available, after clicking on which we go to another page, that text is called Hyper text. Hypertext also keeps any other text attached to it, which is played with the help of mouse click, touch or key press. This is what distinguishes it from ordinary text. Hypertext is also called hyperlink.
Markup:
Hyper Text Markup Language uses HTML tags to create web documents. The HTML tag defines the text in the middle of it, this is called markup.
Language:
HTML is a language that uses code words also known as tags to create web documents. There is also the syntax of html to write these tags and because of this it is called language.
Features of HTML:
There are many common features of HTML, so let us look at all the features one by one.
- It is an easy and simple language which can be easily understood and modified easily.
- It is platform-independent language which means that it can be opened or run in any operating system.
- It provides the programmer the facility to make the web-page attractive by adding graphics, video, audio, images etc. to the web-pages.
- It provides the facility of adding a link to the programmer in the web-page so that it can be easily moved from one page to another.
- It is very easy due to the tag being defined in advance.
How to make a program in HTML?
To run any HTML program, you must have a text editor (Notepad, Notepad++, Bracket) and a web browser. There is already a web browser available in the Windows operating system and different browsers are available in different operating systems.
Whenever you write any HTML program in your text editor, you must first save it with .html or .html extension. When you save, after that it has to be opened in the browser. You can also open it by double clicking on it or after right clicking, you can open it in the browser through the option of open with.
Doctype HTML :
Doctype means Document Type. represents the HTML 5 version. html : This element is the root element of the HTML page.
head :
This is an element that contains the meta information of the document. All CSS and JavaScript links are added inside this element.
Title :
The title of the web-page is written inside this element, which shows in the tab bar at the top of the browser.
body :
Within this tag, all the text or images displayed on the web-page are added.
HTML5
HTML 5 is the fifth and current version of HTML. It has improved the markup available for documents and has introduced application programming interfaces(API) and Document Object Model(DOM). It has introduced various new features like drag and drop, geo-location services
Features of HTML5:
- Introduced new semantic elements like <header>, <footer>, <section>, and <article> for improved structure.
- Enhances multimedia capabilities with native support for audio and video elements.
- Provides the localStorage API, allowing web applications to store data locally on the user’s device.
- Enables websites to access a user’s geographical location.
- Uses SQL database to store data offline.
Difference between HTML and HTML5
| HTML | HTML5 |
| It didn’t support audio and video without the use of flash player support. | It supports audio and video controls with the use of <audio> and <video> tags. |
| It uses cookies to store temporary data. | It uses SQL databases and application cache to store offline data. |
| Does not allow JavaScript to run in the browser. | Allows JavaScript to run in the background. This is possible due to JS Web worker API in HTML5. |
| Vector graphics are possible in HTML with the help of various technologies such as VML, Silver-light, Flash, etc. | Vector graphics are additionally an integral part of HTML5 like SVG and Canvas. |
| It does not allow drag and drop effects. | It allows drag and drop effects. |
| Not possible to draw shapes like circle, rectangle, triangle etc. | HTML5 allows to draw shapes like circle, rectangle, triangle etc. |
| It works with all old browsers. | It supported by all new browser like Firefox, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari, etc. |
| <HTML>,<Body> , and <Head> tags are mandatory while writing a HTML code. | These tags can be omitted while writing HTML code. |
| Older version of HTML are less mobile-friendly. | HTML5 language is more mobile-friendly. |
| Doctype declaration is too long and complicated. | Doctype declaration is quite simple and easy. |
| Elements like nav, header were not present. | New element for web structure like nav, header, footer etc. |
| Character encoding is long and complicated. | Character encoding is simple and easy. |
| It is almost impossible to get true GeoLocation of user with the help of browser. | One can track the GeoLocation of a user easily by using JS GeoLocation API. |
| It can not handle inaccurate syntax. | It is capable of handling inaccurate syntax. |
| Being an older version , it is not fast , flexible , and efficient as compared to HTML5. | It is efficient, flexible and more fast in comparison to HTML. |
| Attributes like charset, async and ping are absent in HTML. | Attributes of charset, async and ping are a part of HTML 5. |
There are many HTML elements which have been modified or removed from HTML5. Some of them are listed below:
| Element | In HTML5 |
| <applet> | Changed to <object> |
| <acronym> | Changed to <abbr> |
| <dir> | Changed to <ul> |
| <frameset> | Removed |
| <frame> | Removed |
| <noframes> | Removed |
| <strike> | No new tag. CSS is used for this |
| <big> | No new tag. CSS is used for this |
| <basefont> | No new tag. CSS is used for this |
| <font> | No new tag. CSS is used for this |
| <center> | No new tag. CSS is used for this |
| <tt> | No new tag. CSS is used for this |