HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the backbone of every website on the internet. It provides the structure and layout for web pages, allowing designers and developers to create visually appealing and interactive online experiences. Understanding HTML coding is essential for anyone looking to design or build a website from scratch.
At its core, HTML consists of a series of tags that define the elements on a web page. These tags are enclosed in angle brackets (< >) and come in pairs – an opening tag and a closing tag. The opening tag specifies the beginning of an element, while the closing tag indicates the end of that element.
One of the most basic HTML tags is the tag, which defines the root element of a web page. Inside the tag, you will typically find two main sections:
and . The section contains meta-information about the page, such as its title and links to external resources like CSS stylesheets or JavaScript files. The section, on the other hand, contains the actual content that users see when they visit your website.
Within the
section, you can use various HTML tags to structure your content. For example, headings are defined using
to
tags, with
being the largest heading size and
being the smallest. Paragraphs are enclosed in
tags, while lists can be created using either ordered (
) or unordered (
) list tags.
To add images to your website, you can use the tag with attributes like src (source) and alt (alternate text) to specify the image file and provide a description for accessibility purposes. Links are created using the tag with an href attribute that defines the URL destination.
HTML also allows for styling elements using inline styles or external CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). By linking a CSS stylesheet to your HTML document using a tag in the head section, you can apply custom styles to your website elements for consistent branding and visual appeal.
In addition to basic structural elements, HTML5 introduced new semantic elements like
