HTML Introduction

What is HTML?

HTML is a Hyper Text Markup Language for describing web documents.

• HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
• A markup language is a set of markup tags
• HTML documents are described by HTML tags
• Each HTML tag describes different document content

HTML Example:

A small HTML document:

My First Heading

My first paragraph.

Example Explained:

• The DOCTYPE declaration defines the document type to be HTML
• The text between and describes an HTML document
• The text between and provides information about the document
• The text between provides a title for the document
• The text between and describes the visible page content
• The text between and describes a heading
• The text between and describes a paragraph
• Using this description, a web browser can display a document with a heading and a paragraph.

HTML Tags:

• HTML tags are keywords (tag names) surrounded by angle brackets:
• content
• HTML tags normally come in pairs like and
• 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 slash before the tag name
• The start tag is often called the opening tag. The end tag is often called the closing tag.

Note:

• Only the area (the white area) is displayed by the browser.

• The declaration helps the browser to display a web page correctly.

• There are different document types on the web.

• To display a document correctly, the browser must know both type and version.

• The doctype declaration is not case sensitive. All cases are acceptable:

Common Declarations:

HTML5

HTML 4.01

XHTML 1.0

Note All tutorials and examples at W3Schools use HTML5.

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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