Basic Guide on HTML Tags
Before diving in, let’s just cover a few of the basics, like what is HTML, tags, attributes, etc.
HTML or HyperText Markup Language, is a basic language that make up websites. It is the structure of all webpages. HTML is plain-text, meaning it is text without any special formatting, i.e. bold, italics, underlined, etc. The HTML file will also end with a .html file extension. HTML tags are hidden keywords that provide the browser with it’s visual content.The HTML file can contain as little or as many tags in order to achieve a desirable outcome.
Tags typically have two parts in order to be valid, the opening and closing part. An example is, <h1> is the opening tag and </h1> is the closing tag. They are almost identical, but the closing tag includes an additional forward-slash ( / ). Exceptions to this rule are when you show an image <img> tag. In the case of using an image, the closing tag is not required.
HTML contains attributes which provide more information about an element. Attributes are specified in the start tag and usually come in name/value pairs, i.e. name=”value”. Here are just a few examples of the many attributes:
Here’s a simple analogy for HTML. Let’s think about HTML as the frame of the house. And as we know, a house has many rooms, each containing furniture, appliances, hardware, etc. Likewise, a webpage has sections (i.e. header, body, footer).
There is a certain hierarchy in which HTML is organized.
Here’s a break down of the structure and each tag. The <html></html> basically defines that this is a webpage. It shows the beginning and end of the document. The header <head></head> contains information like meta tags, the author, stylesheets, title of the document, etc. The information in the header will not display on the webpage. The title <title></title> defines the title that will appear in the title bar of the web page. Lastly, the body <body></body> contains all the information such as links, images, and plain-text. This is visible on the webpage! Also, there can only be one set of each of these and in the correct order.
Here’s a simple list to the most commonly used HTML tags.
Now, let the HTML fun begin…
