The History of HTML - HTML evolved from other mark-up languages.

GML General Markup Language. Created by IBM in the 1960s.
SGML Standard Generalized Markup Language. Evolved from GML.
HTML Hypertext Mark-Up Language. Evolved from SGML.

HTML is an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is not actually a markup language but rather the standard specifications for how a markup language, such as HTML, should be specified. Such a specification is called a Document Type Definition (DTD). HTML is a type of SGML DTD using the rules of SGML for tagging elements

The World Wide Web Consortium or W3C is a vendor-neutral group of international members of Web and Internet developers that set standards for the Web including standards for HTML, which are called recommendations. These recommendations are the standards that Web designers should follow when creating Web documents.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the markup language used for publishing hypertext pages on the World Wide Web, has been through many versions during its relatively short life time.

HTML 2.0 (1994) based its standards on the implementations of HTML by popular browsers at that time.

HTML 3.2 (1996) provided standards for features such as tables, applets, text-flow around images, superscripts, and subscripts while maintaining compatibility with the existing HTML 2.0 standard.

HTML 4.0 (1997) provided standards for advanced features like style sheets.

HTML 4.01 (1999) fixed a number of bugs in the HTML 4.0 specification.

Support for HTML 4.01

Internet Explorer 5 supports some of it Netscape Navigator 4.x supports little of the HTML 4.01 spec. Too early to take advantage of some of the new and "advanced" features that HTML 4.01 introduces, particularly the new table and form elements.

If you validate a typical HTML document to conform with HTML 4.0, you'll likely see several references to attributes that have been "depreciated" in favor of style sheets. For example, the font tag is strongly discouraged in HTML 4.0 in favor of CSS to specify font faces and styles.

If you’re developing for an Intranet and you know your audience exclusively uses Internet Explorer 5 or later, or Netscape Navigator 6 or later, then you’re free to get the most out of HTML 4.0. If you’re developing for the varied audience that is the Internet, you need to be cautious.

Internet Explorer 5 and earlier, Navigator 4.x and earlier, all support the "old" way of doing things that the HTML 4.0 specification has discouraged. It’s even likely that newer versions of these browsers will continue to support deprecated elements.

An HTML 4.0 document type declaration (DTD) can be one of three values or "flavors" - HTML 4.0 Transitional, HTML 4.0 Strict, and HTML Frameset.

HTML 4.0 Transitional allows the use of formatting tags like <FONT> and <B> to specify layout effects. Transitional also allows the use of deprecated tags like the <CENTER> tag.

HTML 4.0 Strict exclusively uses Cascading Style Sheets for layout rather than formatting tags. Also, strict HTML does not allow the use of deprecated or obsolete tags.

HTML 4.0 Frameset combines the transitional flavor with the newly supported frame elements. Designers wishing to split the browser window into two or more smaller windows would use this HTML flavor.

HTML 4.0 introduces support for many new enhancements including those for international and disabled users.

HTML 4.0 addresses internationalization issues on several fronts. Version 4.0 uses the Universal Character Set for its character set, which contains characters for almost every language in the world. Also included in this version is a tag that makes reading text from right to left possible as is done in languages such as Hebrew. Finally, new entities are included that allow for easy entry of the Greek alphabet.

HTML 4.0 addresses accessibility issues (disabled users) with the introduction of several new elements and attributes. Table elements in version 4.0 include attributes that allow for non-graphical browsers to better display their information. HTML 4.0 forms introduce elements that allow for easier form navigation with non-graphical browsers. Image display is also improved by allowing for long descriptions with the new LONGDESC attribute offered by the <IMG> element.

A deprecated tag is one that may not be supported by future versions of HTML. It is recommended that Web designers use newer or different tags to achieve the same effect. With each new version of HTML, tags are deprecated. For example, the latest version of HTML, 4.01, deprecates the
<CENTER>, <FONT>, <BASEFONT>, <STRIKE>, and <U> tags in favor of style sheets.

SHTML stands for Server-side include Hypertext Markup Language. These Web files have an shtml extension. It is called "server-side include", because these files include information that the server will execute.

Tags supported by specific browsers such as Netscape Navigator that are not yet supported by the latest HTML recommendation are known as proprietary extensions because they extend the current HTML recommendations. Proprietary extensions may or may not be supported by the next HTML recommendation, which is why Web designers should use caution when using these tags in their Web pages. It is wise to test Web pages that include proprietary extensions in various Web browsers before their launch to verify that they will render as expected among the different browsers.

DHTML / XML...

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