University Thesis: Evolution of HTML Formatting Standard and Design

This thesis examines the evolution of HTML formatting standards and their impact on website design. It explores the history of HTML, from its early versions to HTML5 and XHTML, highlighting the key features and improvements in each iteration. The research question focuses on how HTML evolution improvises website designing. The study discusses the advantages of HTML5 for both users and web developers, including error handling, enhanced support for web applications, improved element semantics, and maximum mobile support. The features and advantages of XHTML are also discussed, providing a comprehensive overview of the evolution of web development technologies. The thesis emphasizes the importance of semantic coding and the benefits of using HTML5 and XHTML for creating user-friendly, efficient, and feature-rich websites. The document provides valuable insights into the evolution of web technologies and their practical applications.

Running head: THESIS
Thesis: Evolution of HTML Formatting Standard, Consequences of Changes of
Markup
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

1THESIS
Table of Contents
Research question.......................................................................................................................2
How does the HTML evolution improvise the website designing?.......................................2
Overview of HTML and HTML5 features.................................................................................2
The basis of HTML................................................................................................................2
The history and evolution of HTML......................................................................................2
The gradual improvement of web development.....................................................................2
Gradual implementation.........................................................................................................3
The new features of HTML5......................................................................................................3
Advantages of HTML5 for the users.........................................................................................4
Advantages of HTML5 for the web developers.........................................................................4
i. Error Handling....................................................................................................................4
ii. Enhanced support for the web applications.......................................................................4
iii. Improved elements semantics...........................................................................................5
iv. Maximum mobile support.................................................................................................5
Overview of HTML and XHTML features................................................................................5
Features of XHTML...................................................................................................................6
Advantages of XHTML.............................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

2THESIS
This study will showcase the HTML and its evolution in formatting standard. This
study also highlights a research question as well.
Research question
How does the HTML evolution improvise the website designing?
Hyper Text Markup Language is popularly known as the HTML and they are utilized
to design the website. The technology has evolved a lot and so as the HTML.
Overview of HTML and HTML5 features
The basis of HTML
HTML is a programming language used by the web designers and the web developers
to develop a website. The HTML code incorporated with CSS and JavaScript enhances the
web design. The standards that are used for HTML and the CSS are updated and managed by
The World Wide Web Consortium (Deng et al. 2017). The HTML codes are typically
represented by the tags, the angle brackets to properly categorize the code snippets.
The history and evolution of HTML
The HTML is constantly evolving to make the technology more acceptable for the
end users. The older versions of HTML are now obsolete and HTML4 is prevalent in the
modern era, the HTML4 has come up with an innovative option with the creation of
templates (Georgiev, Dimitrov and Georgieva 2017). Now with the aid of HTML4 web
designers have little control over the speed of the web page and the contents interpretation of
the website.

3THESIS
The gradual improvement of web development
With the advent of new technology, with the advent of smartphones, tablets, the users
are now using browsers, are surfing websites more frequently and that is why HTML5 comes
into the picture, it has the capability to facilitates smooth and consistent experience., HTML5
can greatly simplify the development of web applications (Gupta, Gupta and Chaudhary
2017).
Gradual implementation
All the modern day web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Opera support HTML5 and
latest plugins incorporate more features to the browser.
The new features of HTML5
i. The strike, the centre and the font have been dropped from the traditional HTML version
and HTML5 is free from those elements.
ii. The enhanced parsing rules enable more compatibility and enable flexible parsing.
iii. The features like canvas, video, section, the time has been incorporated into HTML5.
iv. The attributes like ping, charset and async have been included.
v. The new APIs in HTML5 is capable to cater drag and drop support and offline caching.
vi. With the help of programs like Silverlight, with the help of Flash, HTML5 offers supports
to vector graphics (Sanoja and Gançarski 2017).
vii. HTML5 also provides support to MathML and that is why mathematical notations are
displayed well now.
viii. Now with the aid of HTML5 advanced support JavaSCript can be executed in the
background.

4THESIS
ix. The Global attributes like id, tab index and repeat can be implied to all elements.
Advantages of HTML5 for the users
i. The data can be stored on the individual’s device that means the apps can be executed on
the browser without the need of any network connectivity.
ii. With the help of a wider array of colours, with the help of shadows the web pages can be
developed to show or to display more fonts.
iii. The objects residing on the web page can move in reply to the cursor movements of the
individuals (Li and Bao 2017).
iv. Games can be executed on the server and no extra software is required or any plugins are
required for the same.
v. The browsers can showcase attractive 3D graphics by utilising the graphics processor.
Advantages of HTML5 for the web developers
i. Error Handling
Previous versions of HTML were not capable to handle the error HTML codes in the
web pages, so that is why the malformed HTML web pages must be minimized and HTML5
can prove to be an effective tool for the error handling of the web page, can prove to be an
effective tool for error handling of the HTML code.
ii. Enhanced support for the web applications
HTML5 can make the browsers capable to execute web applications and that is why
the websites are getting advanced and feature heavy. HTML5 offers more control to the
website's performance (Jing et al 2017). Numerous JS-based hacks and the Flash utilized in

5THESIS
HTML4 are also prevalent in HTML5 as well and this provides the agile, smooth and
effective user experience.
iii. Improved elements semantics
The elements like nav, article, header and section’s semantic roles can make the
scanning procedures less hectic. The improved nav, article, header and section can make the
scanning method and procedures simple and easy.
iv. Maximum mobile support
The smartphones are being used widely all over the world and that is why the mobile
web versions have become more demanding (Imran, Khan and Ahmad 2017). The users want
more features in the mobile web versions so the developers are incorporating HTML5
features into the website as this have the capability to cater advanced flexible features and the
users can now enjoy the desktop web browser features on their smartphone.
Overview of HTML and XHTML features
HTML is known to prepare structured documents that include the structural semantics
like quotes, links, headings and the lists. HTML also allows incorporation of images, videos
and audios to the standard web pages developed using HTML. The code snippets for HTML
are written using angle brackets like <html>. The scripting language like JavaScript can be
added along with the HTML codes to embrace more functionality to the website or the web
page.
XHTML is basically the evolved form of HTML, and it is the incorporation of XML
codes along with the HTML codes. XHTML, unlike HTML, does not allow drop down of
any tags and nested tags. <br> code is allowed in HTML but it is not allowed in XHTML,
</br> is allowed in XHTML (Brelsford and Gang 2017). There are multiple rules and

6THESIS
regulations and restrictions associated with XHTML and via a declaration of DOCTYPE, the
specific rules associated with XHTML can be determined which must be followed.
Features of XHTML
There are multiple features in XHTML and compared to HTML XHTML codes have
certain restrictions that make the language robust and error-free. More and more complicated
websites can be developed with the help of XHTML. If both the two HTML 4.01 and
XHTML 1.0 are compared, then a better overview can be received. The HTML code enables
numerous shortcuts and XHTML does not support those. The elements like the opening of
tags and closing of tags are allowed in case of HTML. Also in case of HTML tags, EMPTY
elements are allowed to not have an end tag (Könnölä et al. 2015). However, in case of
XHTML, everything is necessary ranging from opening tag to close tag. A new shortcut has
been initiated and now XHTML code snippets can be opened or closed all inside the same tag
like <br/>. This shortcut is not applicable in case of HTML 4.01, however, there is a solution
or fix, one may include a space before closing the tag and that can serve the purpose, for
example, </br />.
Advantages of XHTML
The overall usage of markup is an absolute necessity for designing and developing a
website, a minimal variation can prove to be effective, it can change the interface as a whole.
HTML can be used to develop a quality website and XHTML, the extension of HTML can
add some more extra benefits to the websites. Now, XHTML and HTML are popularly used
by the web designers and web developers.
The concept of future conversions can get enhanced greatly due to the advent of
XHTML. The XHTML has the extensibility and can be incorporated with other similar

7THESIS
markup languages. Other than that, the processing application programs of XML are capable
to translate or convert any file in XHTML to any other form (World Wide Web Consortium
2014). There is another beneficial aspect the loading speed of the web page can get enhanced
due to the advent of XHTML. Nowadays the websites are relatively faster due to XML
incorporation to HTML.
XHTML configuration along cannot assist the development of the quality website.
The selection of PSD is important for XHTML conversion service provider. At first, the
design developed in PSD format must be dispersed well and they should be converted to
XHTML code. The skilled web developers must take the entire responsibility to make the
dispersion or the slicing of the design developed in PSD format (Kennedy and Musciano
2012). If the slicing seems perfect then they should proceed with the rest of the work. In this
way, the website can be designed and maintained well.
The web designers and the developers must be careful about the coding. The loading
speed of the web pages can get augmented due to the shorthand codes. The semantic coding
can help to optimize the websites and the semantic coding can help to optimize the texts,
images, audio and video to make the website as well as search engine user-friendly
(Pfaffenberger 2012). The proper convenient PSD to XHTML conversion service can assist
in optimizing the website. Therefore, the enterprises should hire coders who are skilled in
PSD to XHTML conversion service.
The study highlights that HTML evolution has the capability to improvise the website
development. HTML5 and XHTML and their advanced features have been highlighted in the
study. The improved HTML5 and XHTML have the capability to make the user interface of
the websites look good and makes the websites easy to operate.

8THESIS
References
Brelsford, B. and Gang, D., Perfect Sense, Inc., 2017. Automatic placement of hyperlinks on
words and phrases in documents. U.S. Patent 9,697,204.
Deng, X., Wu, T., Yan, J. and Zhang, J., 2017, March. Combinatorial Testing on
Implementations of HTML5 Support. In Software Testing, Verification and Validation
Workshops (ICSTW), 2017 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 262-271). IEEE.
Georgiev, T., Dimitrov, H. and Georgieva, E., 2017. HTML5 BASED SYSTEM FOR
MOBILE LEARNING. In The International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software
for Education (Vol. 2, p. 90). " Carol I" National Defence University.
Gupta, B.B., Gupta, S. and Chaudhary, P., 2017. Enhancing the Browser-Side Context-Aware
Sanitization of Suspicious HTML5 Code for Halting the DOM-Based XSS Vulnerabilities in
Cloud. International Journal of Cloud Applications and Computing (IJCAC), 7(1), pp.1-31.
Imran, S., Khan, A. and Ahmad, B., 2017. Text Steganography Utilizing Xml, Html And
Xhtml Markup Languages. International Journal on Information Technologies &
Security, 9(3).
Jing, A.N., Zhang, L., Zhang, X.C. And You, C.L., 2017. The Effect of HTML5 on
Information Security. DEStech Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering, (cece).
Kennedy, B. and Musciano, C., 2012. HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide. O'Reilly.
Könnölä, M., Hänninen, R., Nummisalo, P. and Laakso, T., Documill Oy, 2015. Method and
arrangement for paginating and previewing XHTML/HTML formatted information content.
Li, X. and Bao, Z., 2017. A comprehensive performance study of HTML5-enabled
WebApps. International Journal of Embedded Systems, 9(2), pp.119-129.

9THESIS
Pfaffenberger, B., 2012. HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible. John Wiley & Sons.
Sanoja, A. and Gançarski, S., 2017, September. Migrating Web Archives from HTML4 to
HTML5: A Block-Based Approach and Its Evaluation. In Advances in Databases and
Information Systems(pp. 375-393). Springer, Cham.
World Wide Web Consortium, 2014. HTML5 A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML
and XHTML. W3C Recommendation 28 October 2014. url: www. w3. org/TR/html5 (visited
on 10/04/2015).