• Initially defined in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web
• HTML 1.1: 1993, first attempt at a standard
• HTML 2.0: 1994, first real standard based on current practice
• HTML 3.2: 1996, first W3C Recommendation, current markup
• HTML 4.0: 1997
• HTML 4.01: 1999, final HTML Specification (styling attributes deprecated)
• XHTML 1.0: 2000, HTML 4.01 as a valid XML application. Strict XHTML 1.0 has no styling attributes
  • revised 2002, bug fixing
• XHTML 1.1: 2001, Module based XHTML 1.0 (allows profiling for embedded devices, phones etc)
  • revised 2006, minor changes

For the distant future (X)HTML 5.0:

• Major review of the functionality in HTML 4.01
• First Public Working Draft January 2008
• Latest Editor's Draft 2 August 2009 but changes almost daily

We will describe markup in terms of the current standard: XHTML 1.0 Strict