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Drifting Designs Tutorials > > Coding > > HTML > > What is HTML?
For starters, HTML stands for Hypertext Mark-Up Language. At first, it may be difficult to figure out what it is for and how to use it, but really, the concept is pretty simple. HTML is a coding language that tells your browser how to display a webpage. For example, whatever browser you are currently using (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera, etc.) took the code for this very webpage, interpreted it, and then displayed it on your screen as how you see it right now. On the top of your screen, go to View > > Source. A Notepad page will pop up displaying a bunch of complicated tags full of < and > signs. What you see there is the HTML code of this webpage that your browser took and interpreted. The code contains instructions that tells the browser how to display the page. That's basically what HTML is: coded instructions as to how to display a webpage.
An example of a very simple HTML code is:
<b>Bolded Text</b>
Let's examine this code. Notice that there are <b> and </b> signs. The <b> sign tells the browser that the text after that tag should be bolded. Then, the slash mark in </b> tag tells the browser to stop bolding the text from then on. Confusing? I'd highly recommend going to w3schools.com to try their online HTML editors. It's where I learned HTML from, and their explanation of HTML is easier to understand than mine, no doubt. =).
If you want to try an online editor to see how HTML works, click here to try w3schools.com's HTML editors. Click on the link that says "A very simple HTML document" or any of the other links below it, and an easy-to-use HTML editor will show up. There you can type in an HTML code on the left hand side of the panel, and the right side will display how the page looks with that HTML. Trying it out for yourself really helps you understand how to use HTML, and what it's for.
Anyhow, basically, HTML is the computer language that tells a computer browser how to display a webpage. It's language is composed of > and < tags that define how to display individual parts of a page, such as pictures, background color, or text. Different codes determine different ways for the browser to display your webpage. Individual sites have individual source codes (unless one copied the source code from another, that is).
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