FREE ESSAY ON HTML LANGUAGE

HTML LANGUAGE

HTML - Hypertext Markup Language
HTML is the language for publishing hypertext on the World Wide Web. This scripting
language can be created and processed by a wide range of tools, from simple plain text
editors - to sophisticated WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) authoring tools. HTML
uses tags to structure text into headings, paragraphs, lists, hypertext links etc. 
A convenient way to automatically fix markup errors is to use the HTML Tidy utility. This
makes the document easier to read and edit. Tidy is very effective at cleaning up markup
created by authoring tools with sloppy habits. Tidy is able to fix up a wide range of
problems and to bring to your attention things that you need to work on yourself. Each
item found is listed with the line number and column so that you can see where the
problem lies in your markup. Tidy won't generate a cleaned up version when there are
problems that it can't be sure of how to handle. These are logged as errors rather than
warnings.
HTML has three variants.
You specify which of these variants you are using by inserting a line at the beginning of
the document. Each variant has its own DTD - Document Type Definition - which sets out
the rules and regulations for using HTML. When you want to use a tool to validate the
HTML document, the tool will know which variant you are using.
Transitional - Used when writing Web pages for the general public, when pages are
accessible for viewing in older browsers. An advantage here is the support of style
sheet, which include different features used in BODY such as bgcolor, text and link
attributes.
*!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/loose.dtd*
Strict - Used when we want really clean structural mark-up, free of any tags associated
with layout. It is used together with W3C's Cascading Style Sheet language (CSS) to get
the font, color, and layout effects we want.
*!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/strict.dtd*
Frameset - Used when we want to partition the browser window into two or more frames.
*!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/frameset.dtd*
It is recommended to use strict DTD whenever possible
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is an independent, international organization, which
supervises various protocols and languages, related to the web such as: HTML, HTTP, URL,
FTP, SGI, etc.
Compared to the older versions HTML 4 includes mechanisms for style sheets, scripting,
embedding objects, improved support for right to left and mixed direction text, and
enhancements to forms for improved accessibility for people with disabilities. 
Bibliography
HTML 4.0 Bible