HTML History

1991 – To write web documents, Sir Tim Berners-Lee proposed 20 elements in his document titled HTML Tags.

1993 – The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) had published a proposal for the first HTML specification. The proposal draft expired

1994 – To ensure compatibility and consistency among different browsers and web pages, and to avoid large companies from monopolizing the web code, Tim Berners-Lee decided to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

1995 – On November this year, the first specification was published: it was HTML 2.0 not HTML 1.0

1997 – HTML 3.2 was released.

1998 – HTML 4 was published. The W3C decided not to continue to evolve HTML and they started to believe that the future was XML. So HTML version stopped at 4.01.

1999 – HTML 4.01 published which included bug fixes.

2000 – XHTML Published. XHTML followed extremely regular syntax which was easier for software to handle. But the previous HTML versions had lack of these regularities.

2004 – A group of developers from Apple, Opera, and Mozilla, led by Ian “Hixie” Hickson, were not pleased with the direction of W3C about HTML and XHTML. They felt that the W3C was ignoring the needs of browser makers and users by focusing on XHTML 2.0. So, they formed a group called the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG). Their aim was to create a HTML markup specification which is realistic, backwards compatibility with the existing browsers.

2005 – WHATWG published their first proposals in 2005 under the name Web Applications 1.0.

2006 – In 2006, the W3C realized that heading to XHTML 2.0 wasn’t a good move. So they decided to support WHATWG officially.

2007 – The new specification was republished by the W3C under the name HTML5.

2009 – The W3C stopped work on XHTML 2.0 and diverted resources to HTML5.

Can I start using HTML5 right now?
HTML5 is to be recommended in 2022, but it is ready to use right now. All the modern browsers support the new HTML5. To boost your confidence of using it think of CSS2.1 which had been using by developers for years before it was recommended in 2009. Why are you missing the benefit of using HTML5 which is the future of HTML?