As a front-end developer, HTML is a popular language used to create simple to complex webpages alongside other web technologies. It’s very much possible to not know much about HTML's history and how it became the de-facto markup language for the web. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss when HTML was invented and detail much of the beginnings of this language.
When was HTML invented?
The first version of HTML was invented in 1993 by Tim Berners-Lee. Since its inception, HTML has had several versions but didn't become the official standard until version 4.01 in December 1999.
The process of developing HTML by physicist Berners-Lee happened at CERN, the birthplace of the web which influenced a lot of the web technologies such as HTTP and URL. Its Wide Area Network was a big influence and inspiration to create hyperlinking for people to easily access academic resources.
HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, has become the language of the web that establishes the format and content of every webpage. With it, we can quickly present, divide, and convey content to users in a static manner. In order to produce font, color, visual, and hyperlink effects on World Wide Web pages, we can tag text within files using HTML and create hierarchical content.
Since its beginnings, HTML has been a steadfast and consistent language that web developers and designers have used to enable people to interact with websites remotely. Without hyperlinks, the web would not exist, especially given how powerful this seemingly simple feature is.
Beginning of HTML
Dedicated ASCII-based applications and command line interfaces like gopher and Archie, which let you search through collections of documents, were used to access much of the text-based, pre-Web internet.
Furthermore, the majority of it was basically unconnected. It was challenging to locate resources and understand the relationships between them because everything (files, documents, etc.) existed independently of one another.
To provide interconnectivity via HyperText technologies were introduced and developed to enable linking to other texts or resources and between webpages, which was made possible by HTTP, URLs, and HTML. The World Wide Web was made possible by HTML's ability to format pages and enable the linking of various texts, resources, and documents over HTTP using URLs.
The simple goal of HTML is to link resources and to create and describe the semantic structure of web pages. The descriptive character of HTML's work and the unidirectional linking of resources like documents or other pages to itself is accomplished through the usage of tags and elements.
The years after HTML
Since HTML's creation, there have been numerous iterations. The five primary versions of HTML are 1.0, 2.0, 3.3, 4.0, and 5.0.
Tim Berners-Lee published HTML 1.0, the original version of HTML, in 1993. It was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This version underwent extensive drafting, prototyping, and testing, but the draft was abandoned after six months.
Nevertheless, the HTML Working Group, which the IETF established for HTML 2.0, put in a tremendous amount of effort. HTML 2.0 incorporated certain ideas and designs from the first HTML version. 1995 saw the release of this edition.
Following this, HTML 3 was published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which removed a few capabilities it had inherited and eventually included markup for mathematical calculations. In 1997, this version was made available.
When HTML 4 was introduced in December 1997, it supported element types that were specific to particular browsers and gradually phased out some Netscape features. It was later made the official standard in December 1999 with version 4.01.
After a long period of time without the release of a new HTML version, HTML 5 finally debuted in 2014, adding support for some multimedia and graphical content as well as expanding its ability to handle semantic content. DOM and APIs, which are crucial to dynamic manipulation, were incorporated into the HTML5 specification.
Final Thoughts
Since 1993, HTML - a markup language - has become a necessity for how the web operates. Its hyperlink a largely overlooked feature is the core feature that helped build the web and make the internet what it is today.
Tim Berners-Lee and CERN's role in the years prior to 1993 are essential markers in the history of HTML and the web, and for which the world will be forever grateful.
