Introduction to HTML
Lesson by Help@Learnful · 4 years ago ·
Instructional Summary
A very basic tutorial on HTML to showcase the features of the Content Block editor!Content Blocks
Introduction
HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.
What is HTML?
- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
- HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages
- HTML describes the structure of a Web page
- HTML consists of a series of elements
- HTML elements tell the browser how to display the content
HTML elements label pieces of content such as "this is a heading", "this is a paragraph", "this is a link", etc.
Tim Berners-Lee
In 1980, physicist Tim Berners-Lee, a contractor at CERN, proposed a system for CERN researchers to use and share documents. In 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a memo proposing an Internet-based hypertext system. Berners-Lee specified HTML and wrote the browser and server software in late 1990. The first publicly available description of HTML was a document called "HTML Tags", first mentioned on the Internet by Tim Berners-Lee in late 1991. It describes 18 elements comprising the initial, relatively simple design of HTML. Except for the hyperlink tag, these were strongly influenced by SGMLguid, an in-house Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)-based documentation format at CERN. Eleven of these elements still exist in HTML 4.
A Simple HTML Document
Page Title
My First Heading
My first paragraph.
Example Explained
- The declaration defines that this document is an HTML5 document
- The element is the root element of an HTML page
- The element contains meta information about the HTML page
- The
element specifies a title for the HTML page (which is shown in the browser's title bar or in the page's tab) - The element defines the document's body, and is a container for all the visible contents, such as headings, paragraphs, images, hyperlinks, tables, lists, etc.
- The
element defines a large heading
- The
element defines a paragraph
What is an HTML Element?
An HTML element is defined by a start tag, some content, and an end tag:
Content goes here...
The HTML element is everything from the start tag to the end tag:
My First Heading
My first paragraph.
Start tag |
Element content |
End tag |
|
My First Heading |
|
|
My first paragraph. |
|
|
none |
none |
Note: Some HTML elements have no content (like the
element). These elements are called empty elements. Empty elements do not have an end tag!
Web Browsers
The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) is to read HTML documents and display them correctly.
A browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses them to determine how to display the document:
HTML Page Structure
Below is a visualization of an HTML page structure:
HTML History
Since the early days of the World Wide Web, there have been many versions of HTML:
Year |
Version |
1989 |
Tim Berners-Lee invented www |
1991 |
Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML |
1993 |
Dave Raggett drafted HTML+ |
1995 |
HTML Working Group defined HTML 2.0 |
1997 |
W3C Recommendation: HTML 3.2 |
1999 |
W3C Recommendation: HTML 4.01 |
2000 |
W3C Recommendation: XHTML 1.0 |
2008 |
WHATWG HTML5 First Public Draft |
2012 |
|
2014 |
|
2016 |
W3C Candidate Recommendation: HTML 5.1 |
2017 |
|
2017 |
Quiz time!
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License
Introduction to HTML by Help@Learnful is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), except where otherwise noted.
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