Let's break it down. Hyper Text is a special sort of text that can link to other text on the web. Simply put, you can't click on a link and go to another page inside a book, but you can click on a link and find more related content on the web. That's the difference between Hyper Text and normal text.
Next comes "Markup Language". HTML is derived from another Markup Language, XML (Xtensible Markup Language). XML is basically "properties of the entities in use by the particular software, specified according to a set of user defined rules." For example, if you have a property to change color of the window of your cool new DVD authoring software from Blue to Red, you simply click on a button that does this for you. What does this button do? It changes a "property" in the "back-end"(the working part of the software) that reads something like this:
<color>
Blue
</color>
Now when you change the color of the window from blue to red, the
<color> property changes to "Red". This color property is saved in a particular file, and the next time the software opens, it reads the file, finds the <color> property, and displays the window in Red.
HTML is similar. There are certain properties, like <form>, <p>, <span> etc., which define how the "elements" inside the page, like paragraphs, forms and images, are to be displayed. When you type the address of a webpage in your browser's address bar, the browser software downloads the text file (it'll have a special extension, .html), and looks at all the properties inside. It then styles the page as per the rules specified inside the file, and renders it onto your computer screen for you to view!
Over the next posts, I will be giving you a basic introduction to HTML, and I'll also point to a few resources for you to start learning HTML in earnest.
