What is HTML?
HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.
- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
- HTML describes the structure of Web pages using markup
- HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages
- HTML elements are represented by tags
- HTML tags label pieces of content such as "heading", "paragraph", "table", and so on
- Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to render the content of the page
A Simple HTML Document
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph.</p>
</body>
</html>
Example Explained
- The
<!DOCTYPE html>declaration defines this document to be HTML5 - The
<html>element is the root element of an HTML page - The
<head>element contains meta information about the document - The
<title>element specifies a title for the document - The
<body>element contains the visible page content - The
<h1>element defines a large heading - The
<p>element defines a paragraph
HTML Tags
HTML tags are element names surrounded by angle brackets:
<tagname>content goes here...</tagname>
- HTML tags normally come in pairs like <p> and </p>
- The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
- The end tag is written like the start tag, but with a forward slash inserted before the tag name
Tip:
The start tag is also called the opening tag, and the end tag the closing tag.
Web Browsers
The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, IE, Firefox, Safari) is to read HTML documents and display them.
The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration
- The
<!DOCTYPE>declaration represents the document type, and helps browsers to display web pages correctly. - It must only appear once, at the top of the page (before any HTML tags).
- The
<!DOCTYPE>declaration is not case sensitive. - The
<!DOCTYPE>declaration for HTML5 is:
<!DOCTYPE html>