HTML Introduction

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Oct 27, 2023 8:03 am

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>

Try it Yourself »

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>

</html>

Note: The content inside the <body> section
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.

HTML History
Since the early days of the World Wide Web, there have been many versions of HTML:

Year
Version

1989
Tim Berners-Lee invented www

1991
Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML

1993
Dave Raggett drafted HTML+

1995
HTML Working Group defined HTML 2.0

1997
W3C Recommendation: HTML 3.2

1999
W3C Recommendation: HTML 4.01

2000
W3C Recommendation: XHTML 1.0

2008
WHATWG HTML5 First Public Draft

2012
WHATWG HTML5 Living Standard

2014
W3C Recommendation: HTML5

2016
W3C Candidate Recommendation: HTML 5.1

2017
W3C Recommendation: HTML5.1 2nd Edition

2017
W3C Recommendation: HTML5.2

This tutorial follows the latest HTML5 standard.

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Reference: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp