What is hypertext markup language (HTML)?
Simply put HTML is what made the internet! (at the beginning anyway). It is the language computers use to display content on web browsers. I could spend ages explaining details but it’s much better if I just demonstrate it. So before I go any further let me show you with an example (I’m afraid this will only work with PC users). I borrowed this excellent code from Quackit.combut it explains the point nicely in a way that any user can quickly access and once you have done it (if you are a coding virgin) in the space of 10 seconds you will have pasted and enacted your own code using only the simplest commands and tools.
- Open notepad on your computer (even if you are at work this should work well.)
- Copy and paste the below into notepad.
- Finally, save the file anywhere as form.html and open it in your broswer (internet explorer, firefox, chrome etc) of choice:
Taken from: http://www.quackit.com/html/html_editors/scratchpad/?example=/html/examples/form_labels_aligned_top
Copy from the following fiddle:
https://jsfiddle.net/919sek3o/
This is just a small example to get you started. What you can see is that HTML adds CONTENT to a browser that’s all it does. This is why it is not actually a programming language but rather a ‘markup language’.
I basically consists of lots of tags in a ‘sandwich’ that tell the browser what to display. In order to make it look nice another language called CSS or cascading style sheets is required.
If you want to learn HTML/CSS I suggest you go to codeacademy and start doing their HTML online course — it’s free! This is a great place to start. Even though they are not actually programming languages they will get you to start understanding easy to read code.
