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History of HTML

History of HTML

Section titled “History of HTML”

HTML has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee invented it in 1989. Understanding HTML’s history helps you appreciate why it works the way it does today.

Timeline

Section titled “Timeline”

1989-1991: The Beginning

Section titled “1989-1991: The Beginning”

Tim Berners-Lee at CERN creates the World Wide Web, including HTML, HTTP, and the first web browser.

  • 1989: Berners-Lee proposes a hypertext system
  • 1990: First web browser and server created
  • 1991: HTML publicly described with 18 original tags

1995: HTML 2.0

Section titled “1995: HTML 2.0”

The first official HTML standard (RFC 1866). Added forms with <form>, <input>, and <select>.

1997: HTML 3.2 and 4.0

Section titled “1997: HTML 3.2 and 4.0”

HTML 3.2 (codenamed “Wilbur”) was the first W3C Recommendation. It added tables, scripts, and unfortunately, lots of visual markup like <font> and <center>.

HTML 4.0 (codenamed “Cougar”) later that year pushed for separating content from presentation:

  • Encouraged CSS for styling
  • Deprecated visual tags like <font>
  • Added accessibility features
  • Introduced three variants: Strict, Transitional, Frameset

1999: HTML 4.01

Section titled “1999: HTML 4.01”

Minor bug fixes to HTML 4.0. This version remained the standard for 15 years.

2000: XHTML

Section titled “2000: XHTML”

XHTML 1.0 reformulated HTML 4.01 as XML:

  • All tags must be lowercase
  • All elements must be closed
  • Attributes must be quoted

While XHTML promoted cleaner code, browsers still treated it as HTML.

2004-2014: HTML5

Section titled “2004-2014: HTML5”

Frustrated by the W3C’s direction toward XHTML 2.0, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera formed WHATWG in 2004 to develop “Web Applications 1.0” (later HTML5).

HTML5 (finalized October 28, 2014) was revolutionary:

New semantic elements:

  • <header>, <footer>, <nav>, <main>
  • <article>, <section>, <aside>
  • <figure>, <figcaption>

Multimedia without plugins:

  • <audio>, <video>
  • <canvas> for graphics

Better forms:

  • type="email", type="date", type="range"
  • <datalist>, <output>, <progress>, <meter>

New APIs:

  • Geolocation, Web Storage, Web Workers
  • Drag and Drop, History API

2016-2017: HTML 5.1 and 5.2

Section titled “2016-2017: HTML 5.1 and 5.2”

Minor updates adding <picture> for responsive images and <dialog> for modal dialogs.

2019-Present: The Living Standard

Section titled “2019-Present: The Living Standard”

In 2019, W3C and WHATWG agreed on a single HTML specification. Today, the HTML Living Standard is maintained by WHATWG and updated continuously.

Recent additions include:

  • <search> element (2022)
  • inert attribute (2022)
  • Popover API (2023)
  • <selectedcontent> for custom selects (2023)

Key Lessons from HTML History

Section titled “Key Lessons from HTML History”

  1. Backward compatibility wins — HTML5 succeeded because it worked with existing pages. XHTML 2.0 failed because it didn’t.

  2. Browsers lead, specs follow — Many HTML features started as browser experiments before becoming standard.

  3. Separation of concerns evolved — We went from mixing <font> tags in content to using CSS and semantic HTML.

  4. The web is forgiving — HTML’s error tolerance (not breaking on invalid code) made the web accessible to everyone.

Further Reading

Section titled “Further Reading”

See our detailed HTML history reference for version-by-version breakdown.