HyperText Markup Language

This is HTML coded on a computer

This is the inventor of HTML on his computer

## The Basics

Hypertext Markup Language (or HTML) is a programming language invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee. HTML has come a long way and HTML 5.0 is the latest, and last, version of HTML. The reason why W3C is stopping working on HTML is because they are now more in favour of the new XHTML.[*citation needed*]

## XHTML

XHTML is the newer version of HTML and it includes features from XML, and is a more strict version of HTML. You need to have the right syntax. For example, in lists like these:

```
<ol>
  <li>This is a list item!
  <li>This is too!
  <li>Also me too!</li>
</ol>

```
You don't need to put an ending tag for the `<li>` tag when it is immediately followed by another `<li>` tag. So, XHTML can get you in good habits of coding webpages because sometimes, you need to use good practice.

## Basic Tags

If you are learning or are a master at web-developing, you probably already know what HTML tags are. You can just skip this and go to the list of Basic HTML Tags. For those of you who are just browsing the wiki and don't know a thing about HTML, then it is recommended to reading this part.

So, HTML tags are the actual content of the webpage. Like, this whole Fandom website was made with HTML. Every website you see on the internet was probably made with HTML, if not XHTML. HTML tags tell the HTML parser that it needs to parse the content in this certain way. So, now you know what HTML tags are!

### List of Basic HTML Tags

Here is a list of the basic HTML tags you probably will see often as a web-developer, of if you are just inspect-elementing pages.

1. `<h1>-<h6>` the h1 all the way through to the h6 tags are for making headings in the page by importance so `<h6>` will be a really small heading. So like **Sub-heading 6** in the editor.
2. `<p>` The p tag stands for "paragraph". This tag is for information about the topic or just plain text you want to display on the page
3. the `a` tag is for hyperlinks. "`a`" stands for "anchor".

So there you go! Three of the most basic HTML tags in order. If you would like a list of HTML tags, go to this category page.

## Paired Languages

If you are planning on learning HTML, it is recommended that you also learn CSS and JavaScript. The reason for this is because without those two, you cannot have a very exciting webpage. CSS is used for styling your page, and JavaScript is for making it interactive. Without those languages, the web would just be a boring place to be and it wouldn't be exciting anymore. Like, for example, the default font for webpages is *Times New Roman* for Chrome usually. It is the default sans-serif font that webpages use. To some people, it is a very boring font especially if every single element has that same font. Same goes for the white background color. So, if you want people liking your webpage, you probably would like to learn at least CSS. JavaScript is so that you can make your webpages interactive. You don't want a page that you can't do anything with. That is where JavaScript comes in.

That is why you should learn those two languages in addition to HTML. That will lead to some more programming languages and then, you may be learning a server-side language so you can store user data, like SQL. If you would like a easier programming language to learn, Python is a relatively easy one.

## Versions

Here is a list of HTML versions in order.

1. HTML 1.0 - Initial release
2. HTML 2.0 - New features for webpage designing
3. HTML 3.0 - *Netscape* introduced the first-ever browser-specific tags
4. HTML 3.2 - Browser-specific tags become a problem and the W3C was founded in 1994
5. HTML 4.0 - New functionality and tags are introduced and *Netscape* starts to slow down
6. XHTML - Introduced because some mobile devices cannot render the sloppy-coding practices as stated above[*citation needed*]
7. HTML 5.0 or HTML5 - HTML5 introduced **many** more tags, although still in development

1. ↑ codefreetutorial.com