What Is HTML?

What is HTML? HTML, short for Hypertext Markup Language, is a very simple computer language used on the Internet and for Web page design. It defines the structure of the pages that appear on the Web and makes it possible to navigate between them. HTML uses tags and hyperlinks to define what text looks like, add pictures to Web pages and direct the user to other pages on the Internet.

HTML Defined
Hypertext Markup Language is a Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) that conforms to International Standard (ISO 8879) for making text readable across different platforms. Text markup is based on structure instead of appearance. This makes the files reusable and allows the code to function independent of the language in which the text is written. Whether you're writing in Chinese, English or Arabic, HTML tags are always the same.

The standard HTML tags are recognized by Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. By having an international standard, it's possible for users to visit Web pages anywhere in the world.

Providing Page Structure
HTML only defines the structure of the pages, which is different than layout. Although HTML tags create page breaks and text decorations, the language was never intended to be used for design purposes. Instead, HTML allows the structure of the pages to be shown properly on different types of terminals.

For example, if you want a table that fills the whole page, rather than defining the width of the browser, you can define the table width as 100 percent. It will then fill the browser to 100% capacity no matter what browser is being used and no matter what type of monitor is being used. Hypertext markup language is deliberately kept very basic, so that it works with every computer across the Internet.

In the early days of the World Wide Web, clever designers used these structural tags to create elaborate page layouts, usually by constructing tables with fixed sizes to hold images and words. In recent years, cascading style sheets (CSS), a tool developed specificially for page layout, has been used with HTML to improve page design. CSS cannot work alone, however. It still needs basic HTML tags to define links and breaks between words and paragaphs.