HTML was devised as an easy means to format textual documents. HTTP is the method for delivering HTML documents. which the client browser then renders into an on-screen image.

HTML and HTTP were both invented bt Tim Berners-Lee, who was then working as a computer and networking specialist at a swiss research institute by the name of CERN. He wanted to give the Institute's researchers a simple markup language that would enable them to share their research papers via the internet. Berners-Lee based HTML onSGML, an international standard for marking uptext for presentation on a variety of physical devices. The basic idea of SGML is that the document's structure should be separated from its presentation.

To date, HTML has gone through four major standards, including the latest which is 4.01. In addition to HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Extensible Markup language (XML) have also provided a valuable contribution to the way of the web.

XHTML 1.0 is the latest standard for web doucuments. This standard infuses the HTML 4.01 standard with extensible language constructs courtesy of XML.