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HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
Filename extension .html, .htm
Internet media type text/html
Type code TEXT
Uniform Type Identifier public.html
Developed by World Wide Web Consortium
Type of format Markup language
Extended to XHTML
Standard(s) W3C HTML 4.01




[edit] Basic features

Various variants of HTML, integrated with CSS and DOM access through EcmaScript (JavaScript and similar), allow for advanced dynamic web page design.

[edit] Definition of HTML

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.

  1. Hypertext is ordinary text that has been dressed up with extra features, such as formatting, images, multimedia, and links to other resources.
  2. Markup is the process of taking ordinary text and adding extra symbols. Each of the symbols used for markup in HTML is a command that tells a browser how to display the text.

[edit] History of HTML

[edit] Origins

In 1980, physicist Tim Berners-Lee, who was an independent contractor at CERN, proposed and prototyped ENQUIRE, a hypertext system for CERN researchers to use to share documents. In 1989, Berners-Lee and CERN data systems engineer Robert Cailliau each submitted separate proposals for an Internet-based hypertext system providing similar functionality. The following year, they collaborated on a joint proposal, the WorldWideWeb (W3) project, which was accepted by CERN.[1][2]

At the time , HTML was not a specification, but a collection of loosely defined elements to solve an immediate problem: the communication and dissemination of ongoing research between Berners-Lee and his colleagues. Rather than reusing existing hypertext systems which were too commercial, too platform-specific, or too complicated for authors, Berners-Lee developed his own, relatively simple system. His original browsing software, a client called "WorldWideWeb", interacting with a server called "httpd", was written in November 1990 on a NeXTcube workstation, using the NEXTSTEP development environment. It tied together his inventions of a document identification system (which later evolved into the URI standard), a protocol (HTTP) for transmitting documents over a TCP/IP network, and a document annotation convention he later referred to as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). HTML essentially grafted hypertext capability onto a homegrown SGML-like markup language, and Berners-Lee's software allowed a computer user to view and navigate between HTML documents accessed via the Internet.[3][4] His solution later combined with the emerging international and public Internet to garner worldwide attention.

[edit] First specifications

The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called "HTML Tags", first mentioned on the Internet by Berners-Lee in late 1991.[5][6] It describes 22 elements comprising the initial, relatively simple design of HTML. Thirteen of these elements still exist in HTML 4.[7]




[edit] Increasing strictness

Early HTML syntax rules and processing requirements were ambiguous or, by design, lenient; when confronted with unfamiliar or poorly-authored markup, Web browsers commonly made assumptions about intent and proceeded with rendering of the document.[13] This helped speed the adoption of HTML by document authors. Over time, as the use of authoring tools increased and more consistent browser behavior was demanded, the trend in the official standards has been to create an increasingly strict language syntax, demanding more precise code. Most browsers, however, continue to forgivingly render documents that are far from valid HTML.

Since the publication of HTML 4.0 in late 1997, the W3C's HTML Working Group focused increasingly — and from 2002 through 2006, exclusively — on the development of XHTML, an XML-based counterpart to HTML that is described on one W3C web page as HTML's "successor".[14][15][16] In 2007, the old HTML Working Group was renamed to XHTML2 Working Group and a new HTML Working Group was chartered to continue the development of HTML.

XHTML is a reformulation of HTML as an XML vocabulary, and can be mixed with other XML vocabularies such as SVG and MathML. XHTML served using the media type for HTML, text/html, has been embraced by many web standards advocates in preference to HTML. XHTML is routinely characterized by mass-media publications for both general and technical audiences as the newest "version" of HTML, but W3C publications, as of 2007, do not make such a claim. Neither HTML 3.2 nor HTML 4.01 have been explicitly rescinded, deprecated, or superseded by any W3C publications;[17] as of 2007, they continue to be listed alongside XHTML as current Recommendations in the W3C's primary publication indices.[18][19][20]

[edit] New development

In November 2006, the W3C published a new draft charter indicating its intent to resume development of HTML in a manner that unifies HTML and XHTML 1.x, allowing this hybrid language to manifest in both an XML format and a "classic HTML" format that is not strictly SGML-based. Among other things, it is planned that the new specification, to be refined and released from 2007 to 2010, will include conformance and parsing requirements, DOM APIs, and new widgets and APIs. The group also intends to publish test suites and validation tools.[21][22] The new HTML working group was rechartered in March 2007[23] The old HTML working group was rechartered and renamed to XHTML2 WG[24].

On 2007-04-10, the Mozilla Foundation, Apple Computer and Opera Software proposed[25] that the new HTML working group of the W3C adopt the WHATWG’s HTML 5 as the starting point of its work and name its future deliverable “HTML 5”. On 2007-05-09, the new HTML working group resolved to do that[26].

[edit] Version history of the standard

  • HTML and HTML 5
  • HTML
  • XHTML Mobile Profile and C-HTML
  • Character encodings
  • Font family
  • HTML editor
  • HTML element
  • HTML scripting
  • Layout engine
  • Quirks mode
  • Style sheets
  • Unicode and HTML
  • W3C
  • Web colors
  • Comparison of

[edit] HTML versions

July, 1993: Hypertext Markup Language,was published at IETF working draft (that is: not a standard – yet).

November, 1995: HTML 2.0 published as IETF Request for Comments:

ultimately all were declared obsolete/historic by RFC 2854 in June 2000.

An HTML 3.0 standard was proposed to the IETF by Dave Raggett and the newly formed W3C in April 1995. It proposed many of the capabilities that were in Raggett's HTML+ proposal, such as support for tables, text flow around figures, and the display of complex math elements.[27] Even though it was designed to be compatible with HTML 2.0, it was too complex at the time to be implemented. Browser vendors opted to support only parts of the proposal, but implemented other markup constructs that they wanted to be incorporated into the standard.[28] When the draft expired in September 1995, work in this direction was discontinued due to lack of browser support. HTML 3.1 was never officially proposed, and the next standard proposal was HTML 3.2 (code-named "Wilbur"), which dropped the majority of the new features in HTML 3.0 and instead adopted many browser-specific element types and attributes that had been created for the Netscape and Mosaic web browsers.[29]

January 14, 1997: HTML 3.2, published as a W3C Recommendation.

HTML 3.2 was never submitted to the IETF, whose HTML Working Group closed in September 1996;[30] it was instead published as one of the W3C's first "Recommendations" in early 1997. Math support as proposed by HTML 3.0 finally came about years later with a different standard, MathML.

December 18, 1997: HTML 4.0, published as a W3C Recommendation. It offers three "flavors":

HTML 4.0 (initially code-named "Cougar")[29] likewise adopted many browser-specific element types and attributes, but at the same time began to try to "clean up" the standard by marking some of them as deprecated, and suggesting they not be used. Minor editorial revisions to the HTML 4.0 specification were published as HTML 4.01.

December 24, 1999: HTML 4.01, published as a W3C Recommendation. It offers the same three flavors as HTML 4.0, and its last errata was published May 12, 2001.

HTML 4.01 and ISO/IEC 15445:2000 are the most recent and final versions of HTML.

May 15, 2000: ISO/IEC 15445:2000 ("ISO HTML", based on HTML 4.01 Strict), published as an ISO/IEC international standard.

HTML 5 is still an Editor’s Draft, and not endorsed by W3C yet.

[edit] XHTML versions


[edit] HTML markup

HTML markup consists of several types of entities, including: elements, attributes, data types and character references.

[edit] The Document Type Definition

In order to enable Document Type Definition (DTD)-based validation with SGML tools and in order to avoid the Quirks mode in browsers, all HTML documents should start with a Document Type Declaration (informally, a "DOCTYPE"). The DTD contains machine readable grammar specifying the permitted and prohibited content for a document conforming to such a DTD. Browsers do not direct to the page in the DTD, however. Browsers only look at the doctype in order to decide the layout mode. Not all doctypes trigger the Standards layout mode avoiding the Quirks mode. For example:



<font> , leaving formatting to Cascading Style Sheets and the

<span> and

<div> tags. SGML-based validators read the DTD in order to properly parse the document and to perform validation. In modern browsers, the HTML 4.01 Strict doctype activates the Standards layout mode for CSS as opposed to the Quirks mode.


[edit] Elements

See HTML elements for more detailed descriptions.

Elements are the basic structure for HTML markup. Elements have two basic properties: attributes and content. Each attribute and each element's content has certain restrictions that must be followed for an HTML document to be considered valid. An element usually has a start label (e.g. <label>) and an end label (e.g. </label>). The element's attributes are contained in the start label and content is located between the labels (e.g. <label attribute="value">Content</label>). Some elements, such as <br> , do not have any content and so need no closing label. Listed below are several types of markup elements used in HTML.

Structural markup describes the purpose of text. For example, <h2>Golf</h2> establishes "Golf" as a second-level heading, which would be rendered in a browser in a manner similar to the "HTML markup" title at the start of this section. Structural markup does not denote any specific rendering, but most web browsers have standardized on how elements should be formatted. Further styling should be done with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Presentational markup describes the appearance of the text, regardless of its function. For example <b>boldface</b> indicates that visual output devices should render "boldface" in bold text, but gives no indication what devices which are unable to do this (such as aural devices that read the text aloud) should do. In the case of both <b>bold</b> ' and <i>italic</i> there are elements which usually have an equivalent visual rendering but are more semantic in nature, namely <strong>strong emphasis</strong> </strong> and


Hypertext markup links parts of the document to other documents. HTML up through version XHTML 1.1 requires the use of an anchor element to create a hyperlink in the flow of text: <a></a> . However, the href attribute must also be set to a valid URL so for example the HTML code, <a href=""></a> , will render the word "" as a hyperlink.

[edit] Attributes

The attributes of an element are name-value pairs, separated by "=", and written within the start label of an element, after the element's name. The value should be enclosed in single or double quotes, although values consisting of certain characters can be left unquoted in HTML (but not XHTML).[31][32] Leaving attribute values unquoted is considered unsafe.[33]



An author may use the style non-attributal codes presentational properties to a particular element. It is considered better practice to use an element’s son- id page and select the element with a stylesheet, though sometimes this can be too cumbersome for a simple ad hoc application of styled properties. The title is used to attach subtextual explanation to an element. In most browsers this title attribute is displayed as what is often referred to as a tooltip. The generic inline span element can be used to demonstrate these various non-attributes,

<span id='anId' class='aClass' style='color:red;' title='Hypertext Markup Language'>HTML</span>


[edit] Other markup

As of version 4.0, HTML defines a set of 252 character entity references and a set of 1,114,050 numeric character references, both of which allow individual characters to be written via simple markup, rather than literally. A literal character and its markup equivalent are considered equivalent and are rendered identically.

The ability to "escape" characters in this way allows for the characters "<" and "&" (when written as &lt; and &amp;, respectively) to be interpreted as character data, rather than markup. For example, a literal "<" normally indicates the start of a label, and "&" normally indicates the start of a character entity reference or numeric character reference; writing it as "&amp;" or "&#38;" allows "&" to be included in the content of elements or the values of attributes. The double-quote character, ", when used to quote an attribute value, must also be escaped as "&quot;" or "&#22;" when it appears within in the attribute value itself. However, since document authors often overlook the need to escape these characters, browsers tend to be very forgiving, treating them as markup only when subsequent text appears to confirm that intent.

Escaping also allows for characters that are not easily typed or that aren't even available in the document's character encoding to be represented within the element and attribute content. For example, "é", a character typically found only on Western European keyboards, can be written in any HTML document as the entity reference &eacute; or as the numeric references &#233; or &#xE9;. The characters comprising those references (that is, the "&", the ";", the letters in "eacute", and so on) are available on all keyboards and are supported in all character encodings, whereas the literal "é" is not.


[edit] Semantic HTML


The goal of semantic HTML requires two things of authors:

1) to avoid the use of presentational markup (elements, attributes and other entities); 2) the use of available markup to differentiate the meanings of phrases and structure in the document. So for example, the book title from above would need to have its own element and class specified such as <cite class="booktitle">The Grapes of Wrath</cite>. Here, the <cite> element is used, because it most closely matches the meaning of this phrase in the text. However, the <cite> element is not specific enough to this task because we mean to cite specifically a book title as opposed to a newspaper article or a particular academic journal.

Semantic HTML also requires complementary specifications and software compliance with these specifications. Primarily, the development and proliferation of CSS has led to increasing support for semantic HTML because CSS provides designers with a rich language to alter the presentation of semantic-only documents. With the development of CSS the need to include presentational properties in a document has virtually disappeared. With the advent and refinement of CSS and the increasing support for it in web browsers, subsequent editions of HTML increasingly stress only using markup that suggests the semantic structure and phrasing of the document, like headings, paragraphs, quotes, and lists, instead of using markup which is written for visual purposes only, like <font>, <b> (bold), and <i> (italics). Some of these elements are not permitted in certain varieties of HTML, like HTML 4.01 Strict. CSS provides a way to separate document semantics from the content's presentation, by keeping everything relevant to presentation defined in a CSS file. See separation of style and content.

Semantic HTML offers many advantages. First, it ensures consistency in style across elements that have the same meaning. Every heading, every quotation mark, every similar element receives the same presentation properties.

Second, semantic HTML frees authors from the need to concern themselves with presentation details. When writing the number two, for example, should it be written out in words ("two"), or should it be written as a numeral (2)? A semantic markup might enter something like <number>2</number> and leave presentation details to the stylesheet designers. Similarly, an author might wonder where to break out quotations into separate indented blocks of text - with purely semantic HTML, such details would be left up to stylesheet designers. Authors would simply indicate quotations when they occur in the text, and not concern themselves with presentation.

A third advantage is device independence and repurposing of documents. A semantic HTML document can be paired with any number of stylesheets to provide output to computer screens (through web browsers), high-resolution printers, handheld devices, aural browsers or braille devices for those with visual impairments, and so on. To accomplish this nothing needs to be changed in a well coded semantic HTML document. Readily available stylesheets make this a simple matter of pairing a semantic HTML document with the appropriate stylesheets (of course, the stylesheet's selectors need to match the appropriate properties in the HTML document).

Some aspects of authoring documents make separating semantics from style (in other words, meaning from presentation) difficult. Some elements are hybrids, using presentation in their very meaning. For example, a table displays content in a tabular form. Often this content only conveys the meaning when presented in this way. Repurposing a table for an aural device typically involves somehow presenting the table as an inherently visual element in an audible form. On the other hand, we frequently present lyrical songs — something inherently meant for audible presentation — and instead present them in textual form on a web page. For these types of elements, the meaning is not so easily separated from their presentation. However, for a great many of the elements used and meanings conveyed in HTML the translation is relatively smooth.

[edit] Delivery of HTML

HTML documents can be delivered by the same means as any other computer file; however, HTML documents are most often delivered in one of the following two forms: Over HTTP servers and through email.

[edit] Publishing HTML with HTTP

The World Wide Web is primarily composed of HTML documents transmitted from a web server to a web browser using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). However, HTTP can be used to serve images, sound and other content in addition to HTML. To allow the web browser to know how to handle the document it received, an indication of the file format of the document must be transmitted along with the document. This vital metadata includes the MIME type (text/html for HTML 4.01 and earlier, application/xhtml+xml for XHTML 1.0 and later) and the character encoding (see Character encodings in HTML).

In modern browsers, the MIME type that is sent with the HTML document affects how the document is interpreted. A document sent with an XHTML MIME type, or served as application/xhtml+xml, is expected to be well-formed XML and a syntax error causes the browser to fail to render the document. The same document sent with a HTML MIME type, or served as text/html, might get displayed since web browsers are more lenient with HTML. However, XHTML parsed this way is not considered either proper XHTML nor HTML, but so-called tag soup.

If the MIME type is not recognized as HTML, the web browser should not attempt to render the document as HTML, even if the document is prefaced with a correct Document Type Declaration. Nevertheless, some web browsers do examine the contents or URL of the document and attempt to infer the file type, despite this being forbidden by the HTTP 1.1 specification.

[edit] HTML e-mail

Most graphical e-mail clients allow the use of a subset of HTML (often ill-defined) to provide formatting and semantic markup capabilities not available with plain text, like emphasized text, block quotations for replies, and diagrams or mathematical formulas that couldn't easily be described otherwise. Many of these clients include both a GUI editor for composing HTML e-mails and a rendering engine for displaying received HTML e-mails. Use of HTML in e-mail is controversial due to compatibility issues, because it can be used in phishing/privacy attacks, because it can confuse spam filters, and because the message size is larger than plain text.

The tag for email is:

<a href="">Email Me!</a>

[edit] Naming conventions

The most common filename extension for files containing HTML is .html. A common abbreviation of this is .htm; it originates from older operating systems and file systems, such as the DOS versions from the 80's and early 90's and FAT, which limit file extensions to three letters. Both forms are widely supported by browsers.

[edit] Current flavors of HTML

Since its inception HTML and its associated protocols gained acceptance relatively quickly. However, no clear standards existed in the early years of the language. Though its creators originally conceived of HTML as a semantic language devoid of presentation details, practical uses pushed many presentational elements and attributes into the language: driven largely by the various browser vendors. The latest standards surrounding HTML reflect efforts to overcome the sometimes chaotic development of the language and to create a rational foundation to build both meaningful and well-presented documents. To return HTML to its role as a semantic language, the W3C has developed style languages such as CSS and XSL to shoulder the burden of presentation. In conjunction the HTML specification has slowly reined in the presentational elements within the specification.

There are two axes differentiating various flavors of HTML as currently specified: SGML-based HTML versus XML-based HTML (referred to as XHTML) on the one axis and strict versus transitional (loose) versus frameset on the other axis.

[edit] Traditional versus XML-based HTML

One difference in the latest HTML specifications lies in the distinction between the SGML-based specification and the XML-based specification. The XML-based specification is usually called XHTML to clearly distinguish it from the more traditional definition; however, the root element name continues to be 'html' even in the XHTML-specified HTML. The W3C intended XHTML 1.0 to be identical to HTML 4.01 except where limitations of XML over the more complex SGML require workarounds.


Aside from the different opening declarations for a document, the differences between an HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 document — in each of the corresponding DTDs — is largely syntactic. The underlying syntax of HTML allows many shortcuts that XHTML does not, such as elements with optional opening or closing tags, and even EMPTY elements which must not have an end tag. By contrast, XHTML requires all elements to have an opening tag or a closing tag. XHTML, however, also introduces a new shortcut: an XHTML tag may be opened and closed within the same tag, by including a slash before the end of the tag like this: <br/><code>. The introduction of this short-hand, undefined in any HTML 4.01 DTD, may confuse earlier software unfamiliar with this new convention.

To understand the subtle differences between HTML and XHTML consider the transformation of a valid and well-formed XHTML 1.0 document into a valid and well-formed HTML 4.01 document. To make this translation requires the following steps:

  1. The language for an element should be specified with a <code>lang attribute rather than the XHTML xml:lang attribute XHTML uses XML's built in language defining functionality attribute.
  4. If present, remove the XML declaration (Typically this is: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>).
  5. Ensure the document’s mime type is set to text/html In an XHTML document, this may come from the HTTP header sent by the server or from the XML declaration at the start of the document. In an HTML document, this may come from the HTTP header sent by the server or a <meta> element within the HTML.
  6. Change the XML empty element short-cut to an HTML style empty element (<br/> to <br>)

Those are the main changes necessary to translate a document from XHTML 1.0 to HTML 4.01. To translate from HTML to XHTML would also require the addition of any omitted opening or closing tags. Whether coding in HTML or XHTML it may just be best to always include the optional labels within an HTML document rather than remembering which labels can be omitted.



Note that by carefully following the W3C’s compatibility guidelines, a user agent should be able to interpret the document equally as HTML or XHTML. For documents which are XHTML 1.0 and have been made compatible in this way, the W3C permits them to the served either as HTML (with a text/html) MIME type), or as XHTML (with an application/xhtml+xml or application/xml MIME type). When delivered as XHTML, browsers should use an XML parser, which adheres strictly to the XML specifications for parsing the document's contents.

[edit] Transitional versus Strict


The primary differences which make the Transitional variant more permissive than the Strict variant (the differences as the same in HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0) are:

[edit] Frameset versus transitional


 Any of the various head related elements.

[edit] Summary of flavors



[edit] Hypertext features not in HTML

HTML lacks some of the features found in earlier hypertext systems, such as typed links, transclusion, source tracking, fat links, and more.[34] Even some hypertext features that were in early versions of HTML have been ignored by most popular web browsers until recently, such as the link element and in-browser Web page editing.

Sometimes Web services or browser manufacturers remedy these shortcomings. For instance, members of the modern social software landscape such as wikis and content management systems allow surfers to edit the Web pages they visit.

[edit] References

  1. "WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project". 1990-11-12. Retrieved 2007-06-16. 
  2. "History to date". 1992-08-03. Retrieved 2007-06-16. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 Raggett, Dave (1998). "2: A history of HTML". Raggett on HTML 4. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-17805-2. 
  4. "Tim Berners-Lee's CERN bio". "Before coming to CERN, Tim worked on, among other things, document production and text processing. He developed his first hypertext system, "Enquire", in 1980 for his own use (although unaware of the existence of the term HyperText). With a background in text processing, real-time software and communications, Tim decided that high energy physics needed a networked hypertext system and CERN was an ideal site for the development of wide-area hypertext ideas. Tim started the WorldWideWeb project at CERN in 1989. He wrote the application on the NeXT along with most of the communications software." 
  5. "HTML Tags". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2007-04-08. 
  6. "First mention of HTML Tags on the www-talk mailing list". World Wide Web Consortium. 1991-10-29. Retrieved 2007-04-08. 
  7. "Index of elements in HTML 4". World Wide Web Consortium. 1999-12-24. Retrieved 2007-04-08. 
  8. Tim Berners-Lee (1991-12-09). "Re: SGML/HTML docs, X Browser (archived www-talk mailing list post)". Retrieved 2007-06-16. "SGML is very general. HTML is a specific application of the SGML basic syntax applied to hypertext documents with simple structure." 
  9. 9.0 9.1 Raymond, Eric. "IETF and the RFC Standards Process". The Art of Unix Programming. "In IETF tradition, standards have to arise from experience with a working prototype implementation — but once they become standards, code that does not conform to them is considered broken and mercilessly scrapped. …Internet-Drafts are not specifications, and software implementers and vendors are specifically barred from claiming compliance with them as if they were specifications. Internet-Drafts are focal points for discussion, usually in a working group… Once an Internet-Draft has been published with an RFC number, it is a specification to which implementers may claim conformance. It is expected that the authors of the RFC and the community at large will begin correcting the specification with field experience." 
  11. "RFC 1866: Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 - Acknowledgments". Internet Engineering Task Force. 2005-09-22. Retrieved 2007-06-16. "Since 1993, a wide variety of Internet participants have contributed to the evolution of HTML, which has included the addition of in-line images introduced by the NCSA Mosaic software for WWW. Dave Raggett played an important role in deriving the forms material from the HTML+ specification. Dan Connolly and Karen Olson Muldrow rewrote the HTML Specification in 1994. The document was then edited by the HTML working group as a whole, with updates being made by Eric Schieler, Mike Knezovich, and Eric W. Sink at Spyglass, Inc. Finally, Roy Fielding restructured the entire draft into its current form." 
  12. "RFC 1866: Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 - Introduction". Internet Engineering Task Force. 2005-09-22. Retrieved 2007-06-16. "This document thus defines a HTML 2.0 (to distinguish it from the previous informal specifications). Future (generally upwardly compatible) versions of HTML with new features will be released with higher version numbers." 
  13. "Hypertext Mark-up Language". 1992. Retrieved 2007-06-16. "WWW parsers should ignore tags which they do not understand, and ignore attributes which they do not understand of tags which they do understand." 
  14. Development of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 occurred in parallel throughout 1998 and 1999. In early 2000, after HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 were published, the HTML Working Group's charter shifted to concentrate on XHTML. "HTML working group charter (2000–2002)". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2006-09-14.  "HTML working group charter (2002–2004)". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2006-09-14. 
  15. "HTML Working Group Roadmap". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2006-09-14. "W3C has no intention to extend HTML 4 as such. Instead, further work is focusing on a reformulation of HTML in XML, namely XHTML." 
  16. The "successor" reference is only in informal prose on the HTML Home Page, cited below. Additionally, the HTML 4.0 and 4.01 Recommendations each contain a hyperlink labelled "latest version of HTML" that, as of 2006, returns a copy of the latest edition of XHTML 1.0.
  17. HTML 4.01's errata document mentions that HTML 4.01 "supersedes" HTML 4.0, but both the 4.0 and 4.01 specifications themselves merely encourage authors to avoid older versions and discourage HTML user agents from being incompatible with older versions.
  18. "Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) Home Page". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2007-06-16.  – This is the W3C's primary index of its current publications and activity relating to HTML and XHTML. It endorses both XHTML and HTML as current technologies. It also explicitly refers to HTML 4.0, 3.2, and 2.0, but not 4.01, as "Previous Versions of HTML".
  19. "W3C Technical Reports and Publications (index of all current W3C publications)". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2006-09-14.  – This is the W3C's primary index of all its current publications. It endorses both XHTML and HTML as current technologies.
  20. "Google web search using terms "", "HTML", and "Rescinded Recommendation"". Retrieved 2006-09-14.  – This search indicates that no publications exist on the W3C web site stating that HTML has been advanced into the W3C's Rescinded Recommendation publication track. There is likewise an absence, in the W3C's XHTML-related recommendations, of references or designation of any edition of HTML as "obsolete", "superseded", "replaced", or "deprecated", which are the terms the organization usually uses to discourage the use of one of its publications. [1][2][3][4][5] XHTML is not considered part of nor a mentioned as superseding the updates to HTML 4.01 as published in "HTML 4 Errata". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2006-09-14. 
  21. "HTML Working Group charter (Nov 2006 draft)". 2006-11-22. Retrieved 2007-01-19. 
  22. "HTML Working Group charter (revision 1.22)". 2007-04-18. Retrieved 2007-05-05. 
  27. "HyperText Markup Language Specification Version 3.0". Retrieved 2007-06-16. 
  28. "Extensions to HTML 3.0". Netscape. "Netscape remains committed to supporting HTML 3.0. To that end, we've gone ahead and implemented several of the more stable proposals, in expectation that they will be approved. …In addition, we've also added several new areas of HTML functionality to Netscape Navigator that are not currently in the HTML 3.0 specification. We think they belong there, and as part of the standards process, we are proposing them for inclusion." 
  29. 29.0 29.1 Arnoud Engelfriet. "Introduction to Wilbur". Web Design Group. Retrieved 2007-06-16. 
  30. "IETF HTML WG". Retrieved 2007-06-16. "NOTE: This working group is closed" 
  34. Jakob Nielsen (2005-01-03). "Reviving Advanced Hypertext". Retrieved 2007-06-16. 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Tutorials and guides

[edit] HTML Markup Validators

[edit] Standard HTML specifications

[edit] Other specifications

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