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HTML4 vs HTML5:  What's the difference


In 1993, HTML (HyperText Markup Language) was first introduced as standard code for web pages on the Internet and has been developed a number of times.
In 1998 HTML version 4 (html4) was released which was easy to use for hobbyists and beginners to create web pages.
In 2014 HTML version 5 (html5) was released as standard with many more possibilities.. The biggest change is that content and layout are strongly separated from each other. A disadvantage of html5 is that a number of attributes of html4 are no longer supported and the use of css has become almost necessary.
In the beginning, the "table" element was frequently used for the layout. This made it easy to create a beautiful website. Actually, tables are meant for the orderly representation of data, not for layout purposes. Tables are not responsive and when used as a layout, websites do not display properly on smartphones.
However, they are good to use for creating your own homepage.
Browsers know which versions of a web page the codes are because the top line of the page states which version is intended.
    for html5: <!DOCTYPE html>
    for html4: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
Hopefully, browsers will continue to support the web pages made in older html versions for a long time so that we can continue to view them.
For those who are used to html4, switching to html5 is a big adjustment.

Some changes html4 vs. html5:
• <font ... >Text</font>   now: <span style= ...>Text</span>
   e.g. <span style="color:blue;">Text</span>
          <span style="color:#0000ff;">Text</span>
          <span style="font-size:16px;">Text</span>
          <span style="font-family:verdana;">Text</span>
• <center>Text</center>  now: <div style="text-align: center;">Text</div>
• <a name="named link destination">Text</a>   now: <a id="named link destination">Text</a>
• <table width="50%">Text</table>  now: <table style="width: 50%">
• <td width="50">Text</td>  now: <td style="width: 50px;">Text</td>
• <BODY text="#000088" bgcolor="#9999ee" link="#000088">  now: can only be done with CSS

links html4:
• manual in Dutch
• HTML4 Element Reference, tags alphabet


links html5:
• tutorial, manual attributes
• HTML5 Element Reference, tags alphabet
• HTML5 validator