The Internet: From the Birth of HTML to the Age of the Smartphone, Essay Example

Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, was developed in 1989, but its roots date back much earlier. As early as the 1940s, scientists were proposing systems by which documents could be easily accessed and linked together. In the 1960s, Ted Nelson first proposed the term “hypertext” in the context of trying to bring these early visions to life. It would not be until the development of the Internet, however, that these ideas would be fully realized. In 1980, a researcher at CERN named Tim Berners-Lee proposed his hypertext protocol; by 1990, Berners-Lee wrote the first Web hypertext file. Early html was based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), which used a system of marking up text to provide standardized formatting for documentation. It was from SGML that the idea of using pairs of tags to provide formatting was taken.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a protocol that differs from HTML. The primary uses, and the difference between the two, are fairly simple to describe. XML is a protocol for storing and transporting data, while HTML is used for displaying data on web pages. XML is widely used for creating internal documents, as the tags and the displayed information are easily read and understood by human beings. XML is also useful for creating internal databases and other information-storage systems.

There are a number of considerations for users and developers where smartphone web-browsing is concerned. Before the advent of smartphones, developers had to use an entirely different language to create web pages for mobile phones. As improvements to mobile phones were developed, web pages were still often hosted in two forms, one for computer browsers and one for mobile browsers. In the age of the smartphone, the same information for a web page can now be sent to smartphones, though it may display differently. It is important for developers to consider this when developing web pages, so that users will be able to navigate the pages while using much smaller screens.

References

http://www.brighthub.com/internet/web-development/articles/6074.aspx

http://techforum4u.com/content.php/318-What-is-the-difference-between-HTML-and-XML

http://webdesign.about.com/od/xml/a/aa060401a.htm

http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/accessibility/mobile.html