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Hypertext Mark-up Language, used to
create documents and links on the world wide web, html is a simple,
text-based set of instructions, known as tags, which describe how the
elements of a web page should be laid out and how they connect to other
documents or programs. Much of the web's success can be attributed to the
accessibility and simplicity of this language, which anyone with a text
editor and a simple reference guide can write. Despite (or perhaps because
of) this simplicity, writing reams of html code is dull work, and many
programs now exist to automate the process.
Unlike real programming
languages such as c++ or JAVA, which need to be compiled for a
specific operating system, html is - in theory, at least -
interpreted by all browsers in the same way, regardless of their
manufacturer or the type of computer they run on. Html standards
(including the latest, version 4) are administered by the W3c, which
works hard to ensure that they are widely adopted. But the browser
manufacturers have not been co-operative in enforcing these standards. Both
Microsoft and netscape have hijacked the html
specification and made their own incompatible additions to it, with the
result that code written for Internet explorer may look completely
different ( or not work at all) in navigator, and vice versa. this
represents a problem for site developers, who must consider writing at least
two versions of their pages to ensure that everyone can read them properly. |
