Introduction to HTML

 What is HTML?

• HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
• It is the standard markup language for creating Web pages
• It describes the structure of a Web page
• It consists of a series of elements
• HTML elements tell the browser how to display the content

A simple HTML document

This above example describes

• 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

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: The <br> element is an empty element. Empty elements do not have an end tag.

Web Browsers

The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) 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: Only the content inside the <body> section (the white area above) will be displayed in a browser.