What is HTML?

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HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language

HTML is the standard markup language for Web pages

HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages

HTML elements are represented by <> tags

HTML Elements

An HTML element is a start tag and an end tag with content in between:

<h1>This is a Heading</h1>

Start tag	Element content	End tag
<h1>	This is a Heading	</h1>
<p>	This is paragraph.	</p>

HTML Attributes

HTML elements can have attributes
Attributes provide additional information about the element
Attributes come in name/value pairs like charset="utf-8"

A Simple HTML Document

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Page Title</title>

<body>
   <h1>This is a Heading</h1>
   <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
   <p>This is another paragraph.</p>
</body>

</html>

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Example Explained

HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages.

The <!DOCTYPE html> declaration defines this document to be HTML5
The <html> element is the root element of an HTML page
The lang attribute defines the language of the document
The <meta> element contains meta information about the document
The charset attribute defines the character set used in 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 Documents

All HTML documents must start with a document type declaration: <!DOCTYPE html>.

The HTML document itself begins with <html> and ends with </html>.

The visible part of the HTML document is between <body> and </body>.

HTML Document Structure

Below is a visualization of an HTML document (an HTML Page):

<html>

<head>

<title>Page title</title>

</head>

<body>

<h1>This is a heading</h1>

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>

<p>This is another paragraph.</p>

</body>

</html>

Note: Only the content inside the <body> section (the white area above) is displayed in a browser.

HTML Headings

HTML headings are defined with <h1> to <h6> tags.

<h1> defines the most important heading. <h6> defines the least important heading:

Example

<h1>This is heading 1</h1>
<h2>This is heading 2</h2>
<h3>This is heading 3</h3>

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HTML Paragraphs

HTML paragraphs are defined with <p> tags:

Example

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>

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HTML Links

HTML links are defined with <a> tags:

Example

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The link's destination is specified in the href attribute.

HTML Images

HTML images are defined with <img> tags.

The source file (src), alternative text (alt), width, and height are provided as attributes:

Example

<img src="img_w3schools.jpg" alt="W3Schools" style="width:120px;height:150px"

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HTML Buttons

HTML buttons are defined with <button> tags:

Example

<button>Click me</button>

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HTML Lists

HTML lists are defined with <ul> (unordered/bullet list) or <ol> (ordered/numbered list) tags, followed by <li> tags (list items):

Example

<ul>
<li>Coffee</li>
<li>Tea</li>
<li>Milk</li>
</ul>

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HTML Tables

An HTML table is defined with a <table> tag.

Table rows are defined with <tr> tags.

Table headers are defined with <th> tags. (bold and centered by default).

Table cells (data) are defined with <td> tags.

Example

<table>
<tr>
    <th>Firstname</th>
    <th>Lastname</th>
    <th>Age</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Jill</td>
    <td>Smith</td>
    <td>50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>Eve</td>
    <td>Jackson</td>
    <td>94</td>
</tr>
</table>

Try it Yourself » With CSS »

Programming HTML

Every HTML element can have attributes.

For web development and programming, the most important attributes are id and class. These attributes are often used to address program based web page manipulations.

Attribute	Example
id	<table id="table01"
class	<p class="normal">
style	<p style="font-size:16px">
data-	<div data-id="500">
onclick	<input onclick="myFunction()">
onmouseover	<a onmouseover="this.setAttribute('style','color:red')">

Full HTML Tutorial

This has been a short description of HTML.

For a full HTML tutorial go to W3Schools HTML Tutorial.

For a full HTML tag reference go to W3Schools Tag Reference.

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