Computers have been around for many decades, but the popularity of programming languages began in the early 1990s. HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language, became the official language of the World Wide Web after it was first conceived in 1990. HTML came after the initial language of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). It made it easier for those who didn’t specialize in SGML to exchange information using hyperlinks.
Problems arose as the Internet grew in popularity and technology evolved. Different web browsers had different implementations for HTML elements. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) worked on developing a standard version of HTML.
In the late 1990s, XML emerged. XML stands for eXtensional Markup Language and differs from HTML in that it doesn’t specify tag sets or semantics. HTML is a description of presentation while XML is a description of content. HTML is designed so that the content in a web browser is easily readable by a human. XML is designed so that content is readable by both the human and a machine across all operating systems on the Internet.
The W3C recommended the first version of X HTML on January 26, 2000. Not only did this version have new XHTML syntax rules, but it also had new XHTML tag rules. The point of this markup language is to provide practical tools for building web pages. Using XHTML, web developers classify documents as transitional, frame set, or strict. In transitional documents, the documents contain deprecated features. In frame set documents, the documents contain frames as well as deprecated features. In strict documents, there are no frames or advocated features.
As technology changes over time, XHTML is updated. Version 1.1 introduced modules, which are sets of related elements. Using modules, web developers can add forms and tables to web pages using XHTML. Web developers have the ability to choose certain modules for different devices.