HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) uses a markup system composed of elements which represent specific content. Markup means that with HTML you declare what is presented to a viewer, not how it is presented. Visual representations are defined by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and realized by browsers. Still existing elements that allow for such, like e.g. [font](<https://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/font>)
, “are entirely obsolete, and must not be used by authors”[1].
HTML is sometimes called a programming language but it has no logic, so is a markup language. HTML tags provide semantic meaning and machine-readability to the content in the page.
An element usually consists of an opening tag (<element_name>
), a closing tag (</element_name>
), which contain the element’s name surrounded by angle brackets, and the content in between: <element_name>...content...</element_name>
There are some HTML elements that don’t have a closing tag or any contents. These are called void elements. Void elements include <img>
, <meta>
, <link>
and <input>
.
Element names can be thought of as descriptive keywords for the content they contain, such as video
, audio
, table
, footer
.
A HTML page may consist of potentially hundreds of elements which are then read by a web browser, interpreted and rendered into human readable or audible content on the screen.
For this document it is important to note the difference between elements and tags:
Elements: video
, audio
, table
, footer
Tags: <video>
, <audio>
, <table>
, <footer>
, </html>
, </body>
Let’s break down a tag…
The <p>
tag represents a common paragraph.
Elements commonly have an opening tag and a closing tag. The opening tag contains the element’s name in angle brackets (<p>
). The closing tag is identical to the opening tag with the addition of a forward slash (/
) between the opening bracket and the element’s name (</p>
).
Content can then go between these two tags: <p>This is a simple paragraph.</p>
.
The following HTML example creates a simple “Hello World” web page.
HTML files can be created using any text editor. The files must be saved with a .html
or .htm
[2] extension in order to be recognized as HTML files.
Once created, this file can be opened in any web browser.