HTML and XHTML Fundamentals
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the markup language used to turn text documents into web pages. The fundamental purpose of HTML as a markup language is to provide a semantic description (the meaning) of the content and establish a document structure (a hierarchy of elements). It is not concerned with presentation, such as how the document will look in a browser. Presentation is the job of Cascading Style Sheets, which is outside the scope of this book. The current version of HTML is defined in the HTML 4.01 Recommendation.
XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 according to the stricter syntax rules of XML (eXtensible Markup Language). The elements are the same, but there are additional restrictions for document markup, as listed in the next section. XHTML includes a family of Recommendations, including XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, Modularization of XHTML, XHTML Basic, and other versions still in development. This reference focuses on the XHTML 1.0 Recommendation. For details on all versions of HTML and XHTML, see the World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML home page at www.w3.org/MarkUp.
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