Compact HTML

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What Does Compact HTML Mean?

Compact HTML (C-HTML) is a markup language for Web access that is designed especially for small computing devices.

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Most of the processing-intensive components of HTML have been removed in C-HTML. Small devices generally do not have adequate processing power to open multiple frames or pages, display a table of contents, display a rich variety of colors or provide access to Web links with the help of an image map, so these items are excluded from C-HTML.

Techopedia Explains Compact HTML

C-HTML is fully compatible with specifications 2.0 to 4.0 of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) formulated HTML. A CPU with processing power ranging from 1 to 10 million instructions per second is sufficient to run all the C-HTML applications. C-HTML does not require a color display to view applications — a screen with between 50 x 30 and 150 x 100 pixels per inch is sufficient. Even a mono (black and white) screen can operate C-HTML applications.

Certain concepts of HTML are excluded from C-HMTL. One of these is tables, because they require a two-dimensional cursor to point to a specific row and column. The use of tables also creates processing overhead.

Image processing is another major concern for small computing devices. Therefore, JPEG images were removed from the C-HTML specification. The concept known as image map has also been excluded, because complex link binding and image processing is required to determine region shapes and sizes.

Other normal HTML concepts/features not available in C-HTML include different fonts and styles, background colors and images, frames, scrolling and style sheets.

C-HTML imposes buffer size constraints on its browser that range from a minimum of 512 bytes to a maximum of 4,096 bytes.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.