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Introduction

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the foundation of a website. While you may see file extensions like php, cfm, asp, etc., these files will still contain HTML tags in order to display content. An HTML file is placed on a server and when requested by a user, it is read into the user’s browser and displayed as a web page.

The standards and practices for writing HTML are set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and there are multiple versions of HTML. Since this is more of an introduction to HTML, we will not go into detail about the various versions like XHTML, HTML 4.01, and HTML 2.0. We also won’t go into classifications of standards like strict, traditional, and frameset.

HTML is a very easy language to learn and super simple to write (not that I would necessarily call HTML a language so to speak). A Markup Language is defined as transporting data, not acting upon the data itself. The “code” is encapsulated in a skeleton like the example below.

<html>
   <head>
     <title> </title>
   </head>
   <body>
   </body>
</html>

HTML Skeleton

Example

As you can see, the language uses words contained inside <>, known as tags or elements. You also might notice that every tag is almost duplicated, but the second tag has a / before it. These are referred to as opening and closing tags and are required by most HTML elements. The important tags here are <html>, <head>, <body>. The <html> simply tells the browser, “Hey, this is html code.” While the <head> tells the browser specific things about the document, it does not display anything on the web page. Finally, anything inside of the <body></body> tags will display in the web page. We will go into more detail about the <head> and <body> later.

References



Link/cite this page

If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.

  • Stewart, Suzy. "Introduction". After Hours Programming. Accessed on March 16, 2024. https://www.afterhoursprogramming.com/tutorial/html/introduction-html/.

  • Stewart, Suzy. "Introduction". After Hours Programming, https://www.afterhoursprogramming.com/tutorial/html/introduction-html/. Accessed 16 March, 2024.

  • Stewart, Suzy. Introduction. After Hours Programming. Retrieved from https://www.afterhoursprogramming.com/tutorial/html/introduction-html/.



24 thoughts on “Introduction”

  1. now i know what the use of this abbreviations.. the concepts is already there..you will HTML is the conveyance of data to WEB expressing a simple hyper language.

  2. I am asking about in HTML skeleton
    <html>
    <head>
    <title></title>
    </head>
    <body>
    </body>
    </html>
    I got it if i am right, heading tag we use in body tag so script tag must be in body tag 🙂

  3. I believe there is an error here:
    "To get started with testing your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code try adding an <h1> tag. Hint: The tag should be placed between the <body> and <script> tags. After you have inserted the <h1> tag, click the "Test Code" button."

    You reference <script> tag. Since it wasn’t in the template I was a bit confused.

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