Have you ever wanted to know how the internet took place? Well, today I will take you on a crash-course on the history of HTML (technically it's a markup language, not a coding language), one of the most popular coding language for web development. Jump right in!
In 1993 Tim Berner-Lee published HTML with only support for basic text and hyperlinks. Despite it's basic functionality, it was revolutionary at the time because the simplicity ensured that it was quick to catch on. He originally started HTML as a science project at CERN (a research institute).
Just 2 years later, HTML 2.0 was released, standardising the use of HTML and introducing forms and tables to support the rapidly growing community and the W3 (The World Wide Web).
In 1997 HTML 3.2 was released adding applets, tables and improved text
formatting such asbold text, italics,
underlines, strikethrough text,
superscript and subscript. Applets aren't currently
supported in HTML5.
The same year HTML 4 was published introducing scripting languages (like JavaScript) to add interactivity to the previously static web pages, but enough about that, this text is about HTML not JavaScript and CSS.
Two years later they released HTML 4.01 providing a minor fix to HTML 4.0.
4 years later development begins on HTML5, meanwhile, WHATWG takes over most areas that W3C previously controlled.
2008, the first draft of HTML5 was published, which introduced new elements like article, section, navigation menus and headers for better SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and also expanding the viewport to support phones and iPads11 years later they introduced some new features in HTML, such as the dialog element which would be used for creating modal dialog boxes. W3C also announced that WHATWG would be the sole publisher of HTML updates, documentation and standards
From 2020 to 2023 there were continued updates to the HTML Development Standard, enhancing pre-existing accessibility, additional new APIs (2020), more focus on exchange of information and performance throughout HTML (2021) and the importance of semantic HTML was emphasised to improve SEO and accessibility.
Currently HTML remains a foundation for most web development throughout the internet. Hope you enjoyed.