HTML History
HTML’s first version didn’t have the version number. HTML was just called as HTML. Back in 1989 to1995 HTML was used to put up some of the simple WebPages. HTML was standardized in the year 1995 by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and numbered it as “HTML 2.0”.
W3C (World Wide Web consortium) presented the next version called “HTML 3.2” in 1997, in 1998 “HTML 4.0” and in 1999 “HTML 4.01” was released. Later on W3C made an announcement that, it would not be developing new versions of HTML and it would focus on extensible XHTML or HTML. W3C recommended web designers to use HTML 4.01 for their (web designers) HTML documents.
At this point of time, development of HTML split off. W3C drew its attention on XHTML 1.0 and from 2000 onwards basics of XHTML was recommended. As web designers weren’t interested to move to rigid parts of XHTML. In 2004, WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) began to develop the new version of HTML called HTML 5 which was not as rigid as XHTML. WHATWG are hopeful that their HTML 5 version will be eventually accepted as a W3C recommendation.
Deciding which version of HTML
While writing a Webpage, the first and foremost decision is whether to write in XHTML or HTML. If a webpage designer is using an editor like dreamweaver the choice of HTML is determined by the doctype chosen. If an XHTML doctype is chosen, then the page will be written XHTML or if an HTML doctype is chosen, then the page will be written in HTML.
Now XHTML is HTML 4.0 which has been rewritten as XML application. If XHTML is written, the attributes will be quoted, tags will be closed and it could be edited in XML editor. Than XHTML, HTML is lot looser because it can leave quotes of attributes like leave tags <p> without closing </p>tag and so on.
Why HTML is used
HTML occupies lesser space, where the download speed will be higher
Response of the older browsers will be more effective to HTML than to a XHTML.
Learning HTML is an easy process because it forgives, like if the tags in HTML are left off the codes still work.
Why XHTML is used
XTML is lot clearer at the beginning and at the end by which events and styles can be added in more easily. Because XHTML is XM, it integrates well into other programming languages. Some of the browsers available respond reliably to XHTML, so that the pages are displayed consistently.
Once decided on XHTML or HTML- which of these versions should be used
HTML
In this there are 3 versions still in regular use around the net. They are:
HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0 and HTML 4.01.
XHTML
In this there are 2 versions in current use, they are:
XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 2.0.
Once decided on a version
Ensure to use a doctype. Using a doctype is one more additional line in HTML documents. By using doctype, it ensures the pages are displayed the way they are intended to be displayed