Having a good understanding of HTML will help you enter the world of website design, allowing you to work with virtually any website, big or small. This article will teach you everything about HTML you need to know in order to start building your own great websites!
What is HTML?
The full form of HTML is HyperText Markup Language:
- HyperText: It’s content that contains links to other networked content.
- Markup language: Markup languages describe information for display, and HTML is one of them (the most popular, in fact).
The content of a web page or document can be displayed differently depending on the type of markup language it is written in. HTML along with CSS and JavaScript forms the trio that powers the web.
Each of these technologies has specific applications. For example, JavaScript powers numerous front-end frameworks, NodeJS, and two of the most popular web development stacks, MEAN and MERN.
HTML Structure
The HTML structure is what provides an HTML document with its overall ‘structure.’ It helps define the overall layout of your HTML document through the use of tags, also known as markup language.
Tags are the code in the HTML document that are enclosed within less-than and greater-than symbols. The format for tags further include angle brackets that contain the same greater-than and less-than symbols within them. Following is the structure of a typical HTML document:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>PageTitle</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Heading</h1>
<p>paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>
- <!DOCTYPE html> – It is the declaration of the code syntax used on a website.
- <html> – This tag is used to enclose the complete document.
- <head> – It is used to provide information about your site, such as its meta information or script files.
- <title> – The title tag is the only required HTML element and the words within it are often used by search engines as a ranking factor.
- <body> – The body tag is one of the primary structural elements used in an HTML document. It is the outermost tag that contains all information displayed to a user. This can include all text, images, link elements, video content, and so on.
- <H1> – The <H1> HTML tag is the most important heading in an HTML document, containing the main title of the document. This means it should be used sparingly, but it should always be relevant to the content of a webpage.
- <p> – The <p> tag is an HTML paragraph element.
HTML Files
Html files are markup files that serve as the source to a website (rather than an image or sound file). They contain text, images, and other content that make up all of our websites.
HTML Tags
These are the building blocks of any website. You can’t have a fully interactive site or any kind of real functionality without these HTML tags.
HTML tags define markup languages so that the content of the website is readable by both humans and machines alike. HTML code is placed within the web page header before the <html> tag. This ensures its recognition.
Syntax
<tag> content </tag>
Note: <tag> and </tag> are known as opening and closing tags, respectively. The opening tag is from where the HTML tag begins and the closing tag signifies its end.
HTML Attributes
HTML attributes are modifiers of HTML elements. They cannot hold any other content besides the values we provide to these attributes. We can specify HTML attributes through CSS and they will be displayed according to the given values.
Understanding HTML and Improving Your HTML Knowledge
HTML is an essential tool for web development. Without the ability to understand how your page is rendered, you could run into issues when dealing with things like structure or styling.
But before you dive in and start coding in HTML, it’s important to have an understanding of what this language is all about so you can learn how it works.
So what if you just want to learn HTML basics? Well, there are plenty of places online for this too. Moreover, there is both free and paid material available online – such as videos, tutorials, webinars, and books – that can help you learn and proceed with HTML.
Moreover, you can enroll in courses and tutorials to have an enhanced HTML learning experience. There are many online HTML courses available on platforms like Udemy and Coursera. Working on HTML projects is a great way to learn better about the leading markup language.
Conclusion
HTML documents are the foundation of a website. Thus, it is important to understand how they really work. We studied the structure, files, tags, and attributes that you can use in HTML documents. We have tried to convey all the basic concepts of HTML. With this, you have also got the idea of how easy it is to learn HTML.
Now it’s time for you to continue your journey of learning HTML. Go out there and start exploring this popular markup language further by reading some tutorials, visiting some good websites that teach about HTML, and taking up a course or two!
Aditya is a seasoned JavaScript developer with extensive experience in MEAN stack development. He also has solid knowledge of various programming tools and technologies, including .NET and Java. His hobbies include reading comics, playing games, and camping.