What is HTML?
HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.
- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
- HTML describes the structure of Web pages using markup
- HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages
- HTML elements are represented by tags
- HTML tags label pieces of content such as "heading", "paragraph", "table", and so on
- Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to render the content of the page
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 this document to be HTML5
- The
<html>
element is the root element of an HTML
page
- The
<head>
element contains meta information about the document
- The
<title>
element specifies a title for the document
- The
<body>
element contains the visible page content
- The
<h1>
element defines a large heading
- The
<p>
element defines a paragraph
HTML Tags
HTML tags are element names surrounded by angle brackets:
<tagname>content goes here...</tagname>
- HTML tags normally come in pairs like
<p>
and </p>
- The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
- The end tag is written like the start tag, but with a forward slash
inserted before the tag name
Tip: The start tag is also called the
opening tag, and the end tag the
closing tag.
HTML Versions
Since the early days of the web, there have been many versions of HTML:
Version |
Year |
HTML |
1991 |
HTML 2.0 |
1995 |
HTML 3.2 |
1997 |
HTML 4.01 |
1999 |
XHTML |
2000 |
HTML5 |
2014 |
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