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>

<p>This is another paragraph.</p>

</body>