Ademir Alijagic

Mar 08, 2023

HTML, CSS, JavaScript Explained in 5 minutes for beginners

HTML is mostly just a collection of words in a file, that turns into a page with text, similar to a newspaper page. And as with a newspaper page an HTML page is structured by making some words the title of that page, and some other words are made into headings, or sections, or even bullet points. You can even add pictures to an HTML page.

As you can see, HTML is not very pretty, but it is functional, and it was a massive revolution back in 1991. Because HTML introduced something completely new, something that we take for granted today, and the name HyperText Markup Language hints to the answer.

The HyperText part of HTML is what we commonly refer to today as plain old links.

You see that first HTML page created the first links to other HTML pages, that linked to even more pages, and eventually all those pages made up what became known as the internet. 

So, it’s thanks to HTML and the ability to link one page to another, that today we enjoy YouTube, Netflix, TikTok, Facebook, Wikipedia, and all your favorite internet sites and services.

All webpages are at the core made up of html code, which defines the structure of the words of that page. But as you could see with the first internet page, this was very ugly.

As you know modern webpages tend to look quite pretty. This is where CSS comes in.

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, which is exactly what it does. CSS files and their code styles html pages to make them look more appealing to the human eye.

CSS was released in 1996, 5 years after the first HTML page and now we could give those simple HTML pages color, backgrounds, and typography.

With CSS we could now move the words around and create sections which look distinct from the rest of the page.

CSS also introduced another thing we take for granted today which is content borders and blocks. Now we could arrange our pages in more ways than just one. We could make the content of the page a bit bigger, smaller, change the font. Add a background image, add a box behind some text and all of this CSS code adds up to a webpage that looks much more unique and aesthetic, than what an HTML page can ever look like.

CSS is also the reason that we can look at the same webpage on a 50-inch tv, and on our smartphones and the page still looks good, because it changes the layout of the page to fit any screen size.

This is what’s called responsive web page design.

So, with CSS we can make our pages more than simple “newspaper pages.” Now they start looking like the modern webpages we recognize and love today. But there is still one element missing to really make a webpage interesting.

And that is interactivity. Which brings us to JavaScript.

JavaScript

JavaScript is another file with code inside of it that tells the HTML and CSS files how to behave.

Up until 1995 when JavaScript came along, webpages were static pages. That meant that when you loaded that page on your browser, that page could not change whatsoever. Not by itself, and certainly not based on anything you did as a visitor.

That means that all the interactivity we take for granted today: like making a google search, logging into our social media accounts, adding to our shopping carts, posting our content, or liking a YouTube video (which I suggest you do if you are enjoying this video) is thanks to JavaScript.

JavaScript makes webpages in essence behave alive, taking the HTML and CSS code and making it interactive where the elements on the webpage can react to what you as the visitor does.

So, an easy way to understand this is if you click something, and something happens, then that’s JavaScript code making that happen.

And clicking is only one of the things that JavaScript does, another one can be user timeout. If you have ever experience being logged out of your bank because you were away from your computer for too long, then you have experienced this.

That’s JavaScript code keeping track of how long you have been active and for security purposes logs you out. Annoying a times? Yes, but also pretty cool how far we have come from 1991 and static webpages, to today where we have a global network of billions of daily users communicating, interacting, sharing, and creating with each other through internet webpages and applications.

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the building blocks of the internet you and I love, and I don’t know what the world would be today without them.