Despite the abundance of websites and their styles, there are some things that unite them. In particular, each site is created using the HTML markup language and styled using CSS cascading style sheets. In this article, we will discuss these languages in more detail, discuss all their features and prospects.
What is HTML
This is a hypertext markup language (from English. Hyper Text Markup Language). Everything we see on the site page, including text content, buttons, forms, images, icons, and so on, is all HTML.
HTML was officially published in 1992. However, its development started even earlier. British scientist Tim Berners-Lee worked on it between 1986 and 1991. Moreover, initially, the purpose of the creation was to be able to share data and documentation with people who do not know the layout.
The basis of HTML is tags. You can use them to create any web document. Moreover, knowing the basic tags, you can easily write your first page in a week. By the way, the HTML Tags document was the first publicly available description of this markup language.
HTML displays hypertext markup. In fact, it instructs the browser on how to display a particular part of the content using its tags. For example, if we need to make a text title, we use a tag<h1></h1>. The text of the article itself, for example, can be enclosed in tags<p></p>. Internal subheadings in the text also have their own tags (<h2>, <h3>and so on).
Every web page is a collection of tags. When it comes to an article, it usually has a title, the text itself, a picture, a list, and subtitles. These are all tags too. Sometimes articles use underscores, bold highlights, and text of different colors. All of this can also be achieved by using tags.
An interesting feature of HTML is that each tag has both an opening element and a closing element. This means that all the content inside is part of this tag. For example, the title of any article like <h1>How to Learn HTML</h1> is fully included in the tag. This means that it will appear as a title in any browser.
Anything outside the tag doesn't apply to it anymore. By the way, the various styles applied to the tag do not apply to such content either.
The markup language is one of the easiest to program. Knowing the tags, you can easily write any web page. However, using only this language, you will get a standard style that is almost not found anywhere else today. Except for very ancient sites, the design of which has remained unchanged since their inception.
CSS
Unlike HTML, CSS is a style language. It is not independent. That is, without HTML, its existence is useless. When an HTML web page is created, CSS styles are added as a separate file and connected to the HTML page (although some styles may be written directly into HTML tags, it is best practice to write the styles in a separate document and connect it to HTML).
What can CSS do? For example, a standard HTML tag<button></button> is a regular grey button. Using CSS, you can not only change its color and size, but also, for example, make a small animation.
Despite the fact that the development of CSS began in the early 90s of the last century, the first official document on this language was published only in 1996. The first recommendation offered ample opportunities for formatting text. For example, you could change font settings, add colors, add different attributes, and add properties to blocks.
Gradually, the language of styles changed for the better. New functionality was added that made it possible to work not only with text anymore. But also with the rest of the elements on the page.
Where are HTML and CSS used? The main use of these languages is to create web pages. But that's not all. For example, markup language and style language are also used when developing web applications. Moreover, they are the basis of the entire visual part that users see. For example, without HTML and CSS, developers would not be able to create an online calculator or weather widget on the site.
Advantages and disadvantages of HTML and CSS
Taking into account the fact that almost any website on the Internet is written using HTML, it is quite difficult to talk about the advantages of this markup language. After all, without it, these sites would simply not exist. Therefore, let's look at the main advantages and disadvantages of CSS. These include:
- Relative ease of use. You can learn CSS fairly quickly. At the very least, this will take less time than learning programming languages like JavaScript. All styles are written in one file and can be used for all pages in a file or web application.
- Reducing the size of the site. The CSS is written in a separate file and then connected to the HTML document. This is why it is possible to reduce the size of an HTML page. Once the website is loaded by the browser, the CSS file is cached. Accordingly, styles will be used for all pages in the future. You don't need to download them again.
- Lots of additional styling options for text and other content. Using CSS, for example, you can wrap other text around a text or button.
- There is no need to make the layout structure tabular. Before the advent of CSS, page layouts were made in the form of tables, which made it easy to position any element in the right place. However, this slowed down the download speed. In addition, the code was cumbersome and inconvenient. The ability to work with containers (div) with the advent of CSS solved this problem.
- Constant updating. CSS, as well as HTML, is constantly being updated. The new versions add interesting and useful functionality that allows not only to simplify work, but also to expand the capabilities of these two languages.
As for the drawbacks, CSS has only one: content is displayed differently in different browsers. Older browsers do not support all features of modern CSS.
HTML and CSS perspectives
Specialists who create page layouts in these two languages are called layout designers. However, layout alone is not enough today. Modern websites, and even more so applications, require knowledge of at least JavaScript in order for pages to get some kind of dynamic.
Therefore, in addition to HTML and CSS, it is necessary to learn at least one programming language. JS is usually bundled with them. And when it comes to writing single-page applications, you should also own one of the libraries (for example, React or Angular) in addition to native JavaScript.
Of course, the layout is unlikely to be replaced in the foreseeable future. That is, the HTML+CSS bundle will continue to be in demand when developing web applications. Today, speaking these languages is simply a vital necessity for a front-end developer. But in order for a person to be competitive in the IT services market in the future, knowledge of other programming languages is also necessary.
