Web Design

What is Web Design?

Web design is all about the planning and creation of websites. A good designer knows HTML and CSS as well as the fundamental principles of web design. A great designer knows that planning a website is as critical as putting the pieces together.When you're setting out to learn web design the first thing you will need to learn is HTML.

What is HTML?

HTML is an abbreviation that stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the language of web pages—the markup language that browsers read to render web pages. HTML has several versions as well as browser support.

HTML Versions

There are a number of versions of HTML that have been supported by web browsers:

• HTML 2.0
  This was published as an IETF RFC in 1995. It was supported by some browsers like Mosaic.
• HTML 3.2
  This version was the first W3C recommendation. It had wider browser support (partially because there were a lot more browsers). It became a recommendation in January 1997.
• HTML 4.0 and HTML 4.01
  In December 1997, the W3C released this upgrade to HTML 3.2 as a recommendation. It added more features and tags and provided three versions: transitional, strict, and frameset. This was updated to 4.01 in December 1999 with a few changes to the specification.                        
• XHTML 1.0
  XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 under XML rules, and it was published as a recommendation by the W3C in January 2000. It has much stricter syntax and requires that any XHTML be valid and well-formed in order to display correctly. Most web browsers render XHTML 1.0 documents the same as they render HTML 4.01 documents.
• HTML5
  HTML5 began being developed in 2004, when the W3C HTML working group decided to merge the HTML and XHTML tree to make HTML a purely XML-based language. This left designers and browser manufacturers who wanted a more flexible solution with the choice to give up or create their own new specification. They created a new group called the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group or WHATWG. HTML5 became a W3C working draft in 2008.