HTML is a MarkupLanguage, used to build WebSite''''''s. A markup language is a method of marking up text with semantics or presentation attributes ''(usually the latter, since very few people seem to be able to grok semantic markup)''. HTML is the markup language used for WorldWideWeb content, i.e. InternetExplorer and NetScape can interpret the tags in HTML. HTML is also the most maddeningly frustrating markup to use, because of its lack of any standard implementation. This has its roots in NetScape's shameless "extension" practices to try to oust all other browsers in the market. MicroSoft, once they had a viable browser engine, picked up on this concept later. Today we have good, well-thought-out, written standards, but nobody seems as quick to implement them as they do to pay lip service to them. The closest we have to real, quality standards implementations are TheMozillaProject and TheKhtmlEngine. If you write HTML for a living, you might be JustAnHtmlCoder. ----- You can find the W3C 'recommendations' for HTML/XHTML: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ but how these become implemented is another matter entirely. I agree about the uneven implementation so far, but browser-wise, things are looking up. The real battle is to get those writing HTML to adopt the standards, something organizations like the Web Standards Project http://www.webstandards.org/ are encouraging. Beneath these partly-implemented recommendations there are many guides to writing HTML that 'degrades gracefully' under less and less compliant browsers, but still does the fancy stuff on compliant ones. For me, one of the biggest current bugbears is the uneven implementation of CascadingStyleSheets. I could go on and on about this - it's a bit of a speciality of mine. But let's see who else is interested. Although HTML is not programming as such, I consider markup languages (including such devices as the 'tags' used in QuarkXPress) to be as much part of the programmer's world as other kinds of language. After all, TedNelson''''''s'''''' HyperText and the SGML superset of which HTML is a subset are as crucial to many of the things we now take for granted as (say) C++. -- DaveEveritt ---- As it turns out, TimBernersLee regarded HTML as the least important element of the WWW triad, after URIs and HTTP. He also never intended for people to compose HTML by hand. His vision was for the browser and editor to be incorporated, but as it turned out, folks who worked on the browsers apparently didn't find editors "sexy" enough. ''Too bad he didn't go on with that... Maybe he would've created some system of automatically interconnected pages that any user could edit... No, that seems too unrealistic :)'' ----- Guides to learning HTML: LearningHtmlAndCss ---- Extremely easy to use. Read by all Web browsers, and most office suites. May be replaced soon by XML, which is content-based markup, pure and simple. With XML, you must use CascadingStyleSheets to define presentation. Style sheets can be used with HTML, but are not strictly necessary. IMHO, HTML should be a de facto standard file format for file-sharing, that is, when plain old ASCII isn't "good enough". -- FrankRobinson ---- Largely considered broken (at least by me). HTML 4/XHTML 1 is an unholy mix of almost everything imaginable, including ancient presentational baggage and inconsistent bloat. Pedantic people should beware of this frustrating language, which, in combination with incomplete implementations of the various levels of CascadingStyleSheets still requires slews of ugly hacks and illogical markup. The next major version of HTML drops all the worthless baggage and starts fresh, though. In theory, XHTML 2.0 would bring HTML back to what it should be: a logical document markup language. Essentially, it would be like HTML 2 all over again, only as XML with a fixed logical structure (no more