In The Beginning

There was HTML.
HTML is a Markup language which uses tags to format text (like <p> for a paragraph or <br> for a line break) . The breakthrough that really made the web 'the web' was the <a> tag, used for linking between different web pages.

HTML is the basis of the web - all websites, formatted emails, many mobile apps, and even this zine are written in HTML. Here's a simple version of this page, before it is interpreted and displayed by a web browser:

      
        <html>
        
          <head>
            <title>In the Beginning... ↑ see the title in the browser tab ↑ </title>
          </head>
          
          <body>
            <h1>In The Beginning</h1>
            <p>There was <a href="https://wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML">HTML</a>.
              <br>
              HTML is a Markup language which uses tags to format text.
            </p>
          </body>
          
        </html>

HTML is super powerful and really fun to play around with... but just on its own like this, with no presentation information - without any interesting typefaces, or unusual layouts, or fun color combinations... it's really boring to look at!
HTML, I love you, but you're not a looker. Imagine how much the web would suck if every page was just black & blue Times New Roman.

It's time to bring in some styling!