Goldstein, Dan
CMPT-109
HTML: A Fun Programming Language
In 1990, the stage was set for one of the most interesting and unique developments in technology that had ever been seen. Throughout mankind, most technological advancements had been physical- things you could touch: guns, airplanes, windmills. However, in 1990 the seemingly unimportant language of HTML was developed by Tim Berners-Lee.
HTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, was first created for the sole purpose of allowing those who weren’t too experienced in the field of SGML (or Standardized General Markup Language) to electronically publish and exchange documents, mostly scientific and technical. It provided a simple way for these people to to do, without needing to know the complex ways of coding SGML. HTML was especially useful because it provided a way to link documents electronically, through what we know as hyperlinks. The markup language served its purpose well.
Shortly after its creation, people started to realize that HTML had a lot of potential. Its versatility due to simplicity lured many people in. It was very easy to learn and had a bunch of purposes. It gained so much popularity that soon companies began creating browsers that were made to view HTML documents. Seeing the potential of this new markup language, a competition between companies began to create the best browser, and hence was born Netscape.
This competition had some negative effects, though. Browser developers created proprietary HTML elements that were specific to their browser and wouldn’t work with any other ones. They used special coding to ensure that their competitors would not be able to leech off their work. This led to a bunch of fragmented websites. HTML written for Netscape, for example, would not convert well to other browsers such as Internet Explorer. It was very difficult to find a website that would work equally well on any browser.
This created the need for a more standardized HTML that would work well regardless of the browser- specific HTML. In 1995, HTML 2.0 was released. It was much improved from the original HTML but that didn’t stop the developers from advancing it even more. By 1999, HTML 4.01 was the norm. By this time, Internet Explorer had surpassed Netscape as the most popular internet browser.
By this time HTML was being taught everywhere, and pretty much anyone with a computer could learn it if they tried. This meant that there were tons of people writing in HTML, and although many of these people were professionals by this time, many were also amateurs. These amateurs were writing crummy codes that didn’t work well, but still they were published and accessible. Due to this, the World Wide Web became much more inefficient than it should have been. These poorly written HTML sites took up much more space and memory on the browsers that ran them.
This created a demand for a more efficient HTML. Where there is demand, supply usually follows, and it did. The W3C (or the World Wide Web Consortium) created a more “clean” version. Developers were encouraged to conform to the standards of this HTML, and it did help clean up the internet a lot. This new form was called XHTML, because instead of being based off of SGML it was based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language). It did away with the way things were presented with HTML, such as font, and replaced it with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This new format of HTML was much easier on browsers, hence allowing them to run much more smoothly.
HTML started as a primitive programming coding, and has since developed the most widely used code around today. Regardless of whether we know it or not, we use HTML every day, from checking our email to submitting assignments online and watching youtube videos. HTML has come a long way- ironic, since its initial purpose was not meant for anything resembling what it is used for today.
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