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.html

HyperText Markup Language

HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

Technical Specs

MIME Type
text/html
Magic Number (Hex)
3C 21 44 4F
Related Formats
XMLXHTMLMDPHP
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History & Origin

Created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. It has evolved through various versions (2.0, 3.2, 4.01, XHTML) to the current active standard, HTML5.

Internal Structure

HTML documents consist of a tree of elements denoted by tags (e.g., <head>, <body>, <div>). The browser parses this tree to construct the DOM (Document Object Model).

Advantages

  • Universal: The foundation of the web.
  • Semantics: Provides meaning to content (headers, lists, articles).
  • Accessibility: Screen readers rely on HTML structure.

Disadvantages

  • Static: Cannot perform logic or calculations without JavaScript.
  • Browser differences: Rendering can vary slightly between browsers.
  • Verbosity: Can become cluttered with nested tags.

Common Use Cases

Web pages
Email templates
Help documentation
User interfaces (Electron apps)
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