HTML Introduction
HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.
What is HTML?
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages
HTML describes the structure of a Web page
HTML consists of a series of elements
HTML elements tell the browser how to display the content
HTML elements label pieces of content such as "this is a heading", "this is
a paragraph", "this is a link", etc.
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 that this document is an HTML5
document
The <html> element is the root element of an HTML page
The <head> element contains meta information about the HTML page
The <title> element specifies a title for the HTML page (which is shown in
the browser's title bar or in the page's tab)
The <body> element defines the document's body, and is a container for all
the visible contents, such as headings, paragraphs, images, hyperlinks,
tables, lists, etc.
The <h1> element defines a large heading
The <p> element defines a paragraph
What is an HTML Element?
An HTML element is defined by a start tag, some content, and an end tag:
<tagname> Content goes here... </tagname>
The HTML element is everything from the start tag to the end tag:
<h1>My First Heading</h1>
<p>My first paragraph. </p>
Start tag Element content End tag
<h1> My First Heading </h1>
<p> My first paragraph. </p>
<br> none none
Note: Some HTML elements have no content (like the <br> element). These
elements are called empty elements. Empty elements do not have an end tag!
Web Browsers
The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) is to read HTML
documents and display them correctly.
A browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses them to determine how to
display the document:
HTML Page Structure
Below is a visualization of an HTML page structure:
<html>
<head>
<title>Page title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph. </p>
HTML Documents
All HTML documents must start with a document type declaration: <!DOCTYPE
html>.
The HTML document itself begins with <html> and ends with </html>.
The visible part of the HTML document is between <body> and </body>.
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:
paragraph. </p>
</body>
</html>
Note: The content inside the <body> section (the white area above) will be
displayed in a browser. The content inside the <title> element will be shown in
the browser's title bar or in the page's tab.