HTML: A Brief History
CSS, HTML5, Web Design
Long ago in the far off land of Switzerland something very interesting began, and Al Gore wasn’t there.
| 1989 | Tim Berners-Lee proposes an Internet based hypertext system for sharing documents between disparate operating systems while working as a contractor at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). If you’re interested CERN is derived from Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire. | ||||||||
| 1991 | The first publicly available description of HTML. It consisted of 18 elements greatly influenced by SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). | ||||||||
| 1993 | First proposal of HTML as a specification to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). At the same time Dave Raggett was working on what he referred to as HTML+ (Hypertext Markup Format) while working for HP (Hewlett-Packard) in Bristol, England. | ||||||||
| 1994 | IETF creates the HTML Working Group.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was also formed by Berners-Lee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS). |
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| 1995, November 24 | HTML 2.0 published as the first specification of the language.
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| 1996, December 16 | CSS Level 1 published as W3C Recommendation | ||||||||
| 1997, January 14 | HTML 3.2 published as W3C Recommendation.
The HTML Working Group had been closed in September of 1996 and all future development fell under the auspices of the W3C. |
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| 1997, December 18 | HTML 4.0 published as W3C Recommendation.
There were three variations: Strict Transitional Frameset |
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| 1998, May 12 | CSS Level 2 published as W3C Recommendation | ||||||||
| 1999, December 24 | HTML 4.01 published as a W3C Recommendation. | ||||||||
| 2011, June 7 | CSS3 Color Module Recommendation | ||||||||
| 2011, September 29 | CSS3 Selector Level 3 Module Recommendation | ||||||||
| 2011, September 29 | CSS3 Namespaces Module Recommendation | ||||||||
| 2012, September 19 | CSS3 Media Query Module Recommendation | ||||||||
| 2014, October 14 | HTML5 published as a W3C Recommendation.
The large gap between HTML 4.01 and HTML5 saw the W3C strike off in a new direction incorporating elements of XML with HTML thus creating XHTML. They continued to work in this direction until a fissure arose in 2004 and members from Apple Computers, Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software formed the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG). They pursued a specification they referred to as HTML5. On April 10, 2007 WHATWG proposed that the W3C adopt their HTML5 specification as the starting point for the newest recommendation. On May 9, 2007 the W3C’s new working group accepted the proposal. |
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| 2016, November 1 | HTML 5.1 published as a W3C Recommendation. |