The language Of The Internet

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) can be considered the language of the Internet. Its user friendliness and ease of use were among the major factors that allowed the explosion of the Web. One of the main advantages of HTML is its device-independent nature, which allows HTML documcnts to be viewed by any Internet-connected computer with any HTML-aware Web browser. HTML is not a programming language, but rather a markup language, based on Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). And the reason for choosing SGML was the very same fact of it being device-independent, well documented, and freely available in the public domain. It conforms to International Standard I S 0 8879:1986, “Information Processing Text and Office Systems Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)” (http:i/ www.iso.ch/cate/dl6387.html). The first HTML specification and browser was produced in summer 1991 by Tim Bkrners-Lee (http://www.bilkent. edu.tr/pub/WWW/People/Berners-Lee/) while he worked at Centre EuropCenne pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN). Additions to IITML were debated, tested, and finalized as HTML 1.0 in March 1993; and in November 1993, NCSA (National Computer Security Association) created the famous Mosaic, the fiist free Web browser, compliant with the HTML 1.0 specs. HTML 1.0 i s often referred to as the first generation, and mostly used text with maybe a few pictures simply stuck in the middle. But in 1993, when the Internet was not yet a common household term, that was quite advancement over word processing and scripting languages. Second-generation pages with HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866, ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1866.txt) added home functionality and better looks to Web pages, such as background, text tables, and even input fields. From a usability and graphics perspective, second-generation Web pages were pretty close to paper documents. Today, howcver, Wcb pages can offer much more than paper Most of the Web pages we are used to on the Internet iod ay a re t hir d-gener a tion HTML pages: HTML 3.2, which offers fast graphics, custom colors and fonts, frames, and full interactivity The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, http:/Jwww.w3.org), founded in 1994, is an international industry consortium charteied formally and overseeing development of standard common protocols for the Web. The W3C is led by Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C, and Jean-FranGois Abramatic (http://www.inria.fr/Jean-Francois. Abramatic), Chair of the W3C, and is funded by Member organizations. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) (http://www.lcs.mit.edu) in the United States, the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Au tomatiqu e (INRIA) (h t tp ://www . inria.fr) in Europe, and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus (http://www.keio.ac.jp) in Asia jointly host the W3C. Currently W3C is working on several HTML enhancements. HTML 4.0 is a new W3C Recommendation, in addition to the text, multimedia, and hyperlink features of the previous HTML versions, also supports more multimedia options, scripting languages, and style sheets, has better printing facilities, and provides for documents that are more accessible to users with disabilities. HTML 4.0 also addresses internationalization and multilingual characteristics for documents published on the Web. It incorporates RFC 2070, “Internationalization of the Hypertext Markup Language”(ftp://ds.internic. net/rfc/rfc2070.txt) and ISOiIEC 106461:1993, “Information TechnologyUniversal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) Part 1: Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane” (11 t tp ://www.iso . ch/cate/d 18741 .litnil) standards as the document character set for HTML. This is probably one of the world’s most inclusive standards dealing with representation of international characters, text direction, punctuation, and other multilingual issues. The syntax of HTML 4.0 documents is defined by the combination of the SGML declaration and Document Type Definition (DTD). In December 1997 the W3C put its final stamp of approval on HTML 4.0, moving it to Recommendation status. Berners-Lee encouraged Web users and builders to insist on HTML 4.0 compliance, ensuring a vendor-independent Web. HTML is a powerful standard that