Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Chapter 8. HTML and XHTML Overview

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the markup language used to turn text documents into web pages. HTML allows authors to identify elements that give the document structure, such as headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on. Other elements act as mechanisms for adding hypertext links, interactive forms, and media such as audio and video to web pages.

HTML has undergone quite a journey since its creation by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991 as a simple way to indicate the meaning and structure of hypertext documents. It didn’t take long for competing browser developers to add on to the initial minimal set of HTML elements or for the first crop of web designers to co-opt HTML as a visual design tool.

XHTML is a reformulation of HTML in XML. In other words, it uses the same vocabulary (the same elements and attributes) as HTML, but the syntactical rules are pulled from XML, which is stricter than HTML. XHTML is discussed in detail later in this chapter.

Before we delve into HTML and XHTML syntax, let’s take a moment to look at the important role (X)HTML plays as well as the recent groundswell of respect it has earned in the new standards-driven web design environment.

The W3C

Seeing the need to bring order to the development of HTML, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994. The W3C continues to oversee HTML and related web technologies and has been releasing updated and standardized versions of HTML in publications known as “Recommendations” ...