Hypertext Markup Language [HTML]

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The set of markup symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser page.

The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

HTML
(HyperText Markup Language)
HTML5 logo and wordmark.svg
The official logo of the latest version, HTML5
Filename extension
  • .html
  • .htm
Internet media type
text/HTML
Type codeTEXT
Uniform Type Identifier (UTI)public.html
Developed byWHATWG
Initial release1993; 30 years ago (1993)
Latest release
Type of formatDocument file format
Container forHTML elements
Contained byWeb browser
Extended fromSGML
Extended toXHTML
Open format?Yes
Websitehtml.spec.whatwg.org

Web browsers receive HTML documents from a web server or from local storage and render the documents into multimedia web pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues for its appearance.

HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images and other objects such as interactive forms may be embedded into the rendered page. HTML provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes, and other items. HTML elements are delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as <img /> and <input /> directly introduce content into the page. Other tags such as <p> and </p> surround and provide information about document text and may include sub-element tags. Browsers do not display the HTML tags but use them to interpret the content of the page.

HTML can embed programs written in a scripting language such as JavaScript, which affects the behavior and content of web pages. The inclusion of CSS defines the look and layout of content. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), former maintainer of the HTML and current maintainer of the CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML since 1997. A form of HTML, known as HTML5, is used to display video and audio, primarily using the <canvas> element, together with JavaScript.

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