What is HTML?

Whatever technologies are used on a website it’s all just a fancy way to deliver HTML to a browser. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It has two key features:

  1. Hyper Text
  2. Markup

Here’s how to think about Markup: When we were students we’d write a paper for a class assignment. You’d turn the draft in and your teacher would mark it up with notes. Then you’d take that marked up draft and rewrite the paper to reflect the mark up. That’s the essence of the Markup of Hyper Text Markup Language. You take plain text and apply Markup elements. A browser then takes that marked up document and displays it to the visitor according to the markup.

The browser turns this:

Sample HTML code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <title>Your title</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>HTML Hobbyist</h1>
    <p>HTML, all by itself, can be viewed on any browser. HTML, all by itself, can be viewed on any platform. HTML, all by itself, can be viewed on any device. HTML, all by itself, is 99% accessible.</p>
    <p><a href="https://www.htmlhobbyist.com/">HTML Hobbyist</a></p>
    <img src="/images/html-hobbyist-badge.svg" height="200" width="200" />
  </body>
</html>

Into this something like this:

A sample HTML page

Markup by itself isn’t a phenomenal technology. What really made the web useful was Hyper Text. Think of hyper space where you can jump your starship from one location to another. What Hyper Text does is allow you to use Markup to link to other documents or other locations within documents. In a normal book you move from page to page and footnotes and chapter notes and citations and bibliographies and glossaries and appendices are all used to give additional information. But with Hyper Text and links we can now link directly to a source, instead of just making do with a blurb and a citation. And that’s the phenomenal thing about Hyper Text: it lets you jump from site to site, document to document, and even to different places within a single document.

We should give HTML the respect it deserves. HTML, all by itself, can be viewed on any platform. HTML, all by itself, can be viewed on any browser. HTML, all by itself, can be viewed on any device and screen size. HTML, all by itself, is 99% accessible.