HTML: Past, Present and Future
HTML, which means hyper text markup language, is the language of the World Wide Web. It is called a markup language because, conceptually, it arose from the marks editors would make with pen on a text, describing or referring to that text in the way that HTML "describes" a website to your Web browser. It differentiates itself from the main text of the site by using tags that look like <this>. Your browser sees the HTML tags and converts them into graphical, textual, and audible displays.
HTML was instrumental to the evolution of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. Physicist Tim Berners Lee invented it in 1990 within the framework of academia, and of course, could not have foreseen how widespread its usage would quickly become. The first Web conference was held in Geneva, in 1994, and had 380 attendees. By December 1998, four years later, 147 million people were using the Web.
As browsers and Web design became more sophisticated, other types of programming script and software, like JavaScript and CSS, arose. These are often combined with HTML. However, HTML, though it is a relatively simple programming language that beginners can pick up and create a basic web site with, is still the building block of the Internet.
ZDNet, run by computer industry publisher Ziff Davis, recently interviewed the founder of Jolicloud, a cloud-based operating system (one based online, as HTML is, rather than native systems that actually exist as installed software on your computer or mobile phone) about the future of the Internet. He believes that operating systems will someday exist only on the Internet, and that current operating systems such as Windows were designed for a pre-Web world. This could mean that HTML has an even bigger role to play in the future, as Web applications eclipse the operating systems we now use.
The newest version of HMTL is HTML 5, which has some significant differences at the programming level from its predecessors. The main difference for users is that HTML 5 supports audio and video, potentially making it unnecessary for users to download additional software, such as Flash, to view high-end sites. Flash is currently running on 98 percent of the world's computers, according to a Flash spokesperson, so it won't be disappearing anytime soon. The slowness of the average Internet user to update their browser is another factor; however, when people like Steve Jobs put their faith in HTML 5 rather than Flash, the world pays attention.