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HTML, CSS, and JavaScript: The Fibers of the Web

How does a website come to be? Take a look at Groupon's study of the three languages that determine the basic look of any website.

HTML: An acronym for “hyper-text-markup language,” HTML is the language responsible for the structure of pages on the web. HTML determines how and where a browser such as Firefox, Chrome, or Internet Explorer displays its information on a webpage. HTML consists of descriptors, called tags, and elements, that give visual characteristics to text and images on a website. These characteristics include whether text appears bold, when to indicate that you've started a new paragraph, and where a table begins and ends.

CSS: On most websites, HTML works in tandem with CSS, short for “cascading style sheets.” Whereas HTML lays out the format of a webpage, CSS lays out its presentation, defining a standard style for things such as colors, fonts, and sizes. Built out of necessity when designers needed to create more in-depth visual elements than HTML could handle alone, CSS offers another big advantage: simply altering one element on a CSS page can instantly affect the change across the entire website.

JavaScript: While HTML and CSS affects the way information is displayed on a website, JavaScript affects the way it behaves. One of the most popular programming languages in use, JavaScript can be inserted into HTML pages to make websites more dynamic, carrying out interactive tasks such as validating a password or prompting a user for specific information.

Altogether, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript form the common toolset used to develop a website's front end, or the parts that users can see and interact with. Developers also work in the back end to create databases and other sorts of scaffolding—the specifics of which all depend on a website's specific needs.