Key facts

  • 1989: Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web at CERN, establishing the linked hypertext model behind modern web pages.
  • 1991: HTML was first publicly described, giving browsers a common tag-based language for structuring web documents.
  • 1994: The World Wide Web Consortium was founded by Tim Berners-Lee, making W3C a central standards body for web technologies.
  • 1996: CSS Level 1 became a W3C Recommendation, separating presentation rules such as colour, font and spacing from HTML content.
  • 1997: ECMAScript was standardised as ECMA-262, providing the formal language standard followed by JavaScript implementations.

Key Points at a Glance

  1. 1

    1989: Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web at CERN, establishing the linked hypertext model behind modern web pages.

  2. 2

    1991: HTML was first publicly described, giving browsers a common tag-based language for structuring web documents.

  3. 3

    1994: The World Wide Web Consortium was founded by Tim Berners-Lee, making W3C a central standards body for web technologies.

  4. 4

    1996: CSS Level 1 became a W3C Recommendation, separating presentation rules such as colour, font and spacing from HTML content.

  5. 5

    1997: ECMAScript was standardised as ECMA-262, providing the formal language standard followed by JavaScript implementations.

  6. 6

    1998: W3C DOM Level 1 standardised a platform-neutral object model for programmatic access to document elements.

  7. 7

    2014: HTML5 became a W3C Recommendation, adding semantic elements, native multimedia tags and richer form controls for modern web applications.

  8. 8

    2015: ECMAScript 2015 introduced `let`, `const`, arrow functions, classes and modules into mainstream modern JavaScript.

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HTML document structure and semantic tags

HTML is the markup language that gives a web page its structure. A valid HTML5 document normally begins with the HTML5 doctype declaration, followed by the root `html` element, a `head` section for metadata and linked resources, and a `body` section for visible content. The `title` tag sets the browser-tab title and is important for search display. Metadata such as character encoding is commonly declared through a `meta charset` declaration, while external style sheets are linked through the `link rel="stylesheet"` pattern and scripts through the `script` element.

HTML5 strengthened semantic markup. Elements such as `header`, `nav`, `main`, `section`, `article`, `aside` and `footer` describe the role of content instead of only its appearance. Text structure uses headings `h1` to `h6`, paragraphs, lists, tables and inline elements such as `strong`, `em`, `a` and `span`. Images use `img` with an `alt` attribute for accessibility. Native media support comes through `audio` and `video`, reducing dependence on older plug-ins.

Exam takeaway: HTML answers the question "what is this content?", not "how should it look?"

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