“HTML” Hyper Text Markup Language

HTML, sometimes referred to as “the language of the web” isn’t really a language as much as it is a standard way of providing textural formatting information to describe a web page.  All web pages are written with HTML.  It’s similar to XML in that it’s composed of tags, attributes, and data, but unlike XML, it does have predefined tags.  It has tags to represent text, buttons, check boxes, drop down list boxes, images, and several other items.  Each predefined tag also has several predefined attributes.  For example, a button with the text “OK” on it is represented like this:

The tag “input” is a predefined tag available in HTML that represents some type of input.  It could be a text box, button, or other input element.  The attribute “type” is a predefined attribute available for the “input” tag.  The text “button” that’s assigned to “type” is a predefined value for the type, indicating which type of input control to display.  The value of “OK” represents the text to display on the button.

No matter what web page you’re on, you can always view the raw HTML of that page if you want.  If you’re using Microsoft Internet Explorer, open the “View” menu, then choose “source”.  If you’re on an encrypted page, it might be disabled.  If you’re using FireFox, open the “View” menu and choose “Page Source”.

For a full tutorial on HTML, I recommend w3 schools.

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