HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.
What is HTML?
HTML elements label pieces of content such as “this is a heading”, “this is a paragraph”, “this is a link”, etc.
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
A Simple HTML Document
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>My 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:
