HTML

The HTML language was created in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, a well-known scientist who is considered the father of the World Wide Web. At its initial moment in the HTML language, a small number of tags or labels that were used to compose documents were described. The greatest innovation in them was the possibility of creating links between documents, so that navigation between pages was possible.

To define the HTML language, SGML was used as a base, which is a meta-language of markup (composed of tags, like HTML itself). SGML stands for Standard Generalized Markup Language and allows you to specify other markup languages, such as HTML. In 1993 the first draft specification of the HTML language based on SGML was published. This first stage of HTML standardization was created within the framework of the IEFT (Internet Engineering Task Force). To her we owe the first attempt to standardize HTML, which became known as HTML 2.0.

The creation of the organization that currently regulates web standards, known as W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)was not produced until 1996. HTML version 3.2 was published in January 1997 under the supervision of the W3C. Subsequently, HTML 4.0 was published in April 1998, which we can consider as the first mature version of HTML.

HTML 4.0 brought as a novelty the separation between content and presentation. Maintaining the definition of what is the content in the HTML language and the presentation layer in the language. This version of HTML was maintained for many years and there were no changes to the HTML standard, but rather to neighboring languages ​​such as CSS.

In fact, W3C decided that the evolution of HTML would be XHTML and focused on defining this new standard. It started from the HTML base, but used the language as the basis for its definition, which is why it added some stricter rules in the creation of HTML documents, such as that all tags had their corresponding closing tag. The truth is that XHTML was never a widely supported project and the efforts to create this standard never bore much fruit.

Given the lack of interest of the W3C in the development of new versions of HTML, a parallel group focused on developing web technologies called WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group). To them we owe the impetus that came to HTML and open standards with the publication of HTML 5. Such was the impact of the HTML 5 movement that the W3C decided to relegate its efforts to create a new language to replace HTML and resumed activities for HTML standardization, creating the first HTML 5 standardization documents in 2007.

The HTML5 movement not only affected HTML itself, but also encompassed a number of other related languages ​​such as CSS and also Javascript. As far as CSS is concerned, its fundamental contribution was CSS3, which brought multiple improvements that made it possible to more easily separate all aspects related to the presentation. Regarding Javascript HTML 5 brought the standardization of Javascript APIs that browsers had to respect, to work in a unique way with page elements and access modern features such as geolocation or full screen work.