Programming Languages
Programming (also called scripting or coding) is the writing of a set of commands, instructions that can be compiled and/or interpreted and then transformed to an executable file that an electronic machine can execute or "run". There are many programming languages used, such as: C, C++, Java, Lisp, Pascal, BASIC, Visual basic and the well known HTML and PHP.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the most commonly used for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser like Internet explorer, Opera, Netscape, Safari, Firefox. HTML is used to structure information denoting certain text, such as headings, paragraphs, lists and so on — and can be used to describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document. HTML's grammar structure is the HTML DTD that was created using SGML syntax.
It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee from London, and further developed by the IETF. HTML is now an international standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000). Later HTML specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Early versions of HTML were defined with looser syntactic rules, which helped its adoption by those unfamiliar with web publishing. Web browsers commonly made assumptions about intent and proceeded to render the page. Over time, the trend in the official standards has been to create an increasingly strict language syntax; however, browsers still continue to render pages that are far from valid HTML.
XHTML, which applies the stricter rules of XML to HTML to make it easier to process and maintain, is the W3C's successor to HTML. As such, many consider XHTML to be the "current version" of HTML, but it is a separate, parallel standard; the W3C continues to recommend the use of either XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.0, or HTML 4.01 for web publishing.
HTML can be used with other scripting languages like PHP. This is the most common combination so far. HTML and CSS can create the design and PHP can do the functionality. There are many things we cannot create in HTMlL, but in PHP we can send mail functions, use mail forms and forum scripts, web directories, picture galleries, chat, counters and so on. These features also can be created with other scripting languages, too, but PHP is the easiest and the most versatile.
HTML contains many Markup element types. The first MET that was used is the Hyperlink markup. Others came into later use, such as bold, alt atribute, color picker, tables, rows, background images, layers and so on.
The Document Type Definition
In order to specify which version of the HTML standard they conform to, all HTML documents should start with a Document Type Declaration (informally, a "DOCTYPE"), which makes reference to a Document Type Definition (DTD).
For example:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
This declaration asserts that the document conforms to the Strict DTD of HTML 4.01, which is purely structural, leaving formatting to Cascading Style Sheets. In some cases, the presence or absence of an appropriate DTD may influence how a web browser will display the page.
In addition to the Strict DTD, HTML 4.01 provides Transitional and Frameset DTDs. The Transitional DTD was intended to gradually phase in the changes made in the Strict DTD, while the Frameset DTD was intended for those documents which contained frames.
Style and Content
With the arrival of CSS and the high support for it in web browsers, CSS provides a way to separate document structure from the content's presentation by keeping all code dealing with presentation defined in a CSS file.
Now, when almost all HTML editors are WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), there is no purpose to learning all HTML commands. We will ltherefore not talk about them.