Introduction to HTML

Understanding the word ‘HTML’.

HTML means Hyper Text Markup Language

Hyper Text means “linking related text documents” while

Markup Language means “set of symbols inserted to control structure and relationship between parts.

Therefore, HTML could be defined as linking related text documents with set of symbols inserted to control its structure and relationships between parts.

Components of HTML.

There are two essential components of HTML which must be available before writing your first html.

1) Text Editor: The text editor contains the source code of the page. This part of the html can be modified and it is always advisable to save the file with a .htm or .html file extension so that it can be recognize as an HTML file by the second component.

Examples of text editors include: a) Notepad++ b) Atom c) Brackets d) VSCode e) Sublime Text etc.

Choice of text editor could be based on the following information. i) Autocomplete/Suggestions ii) Error detection iii) Color-coding iv) Syntax highlighting v) Live Previews

2) Browser: This is the part which shows the output of the source code and which cannot be changed directly unless it is adjusted from within the text editor. Some common examples of browser include: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Safari etc.

Basic structure of an HTML.

There are three basic tags which just frame and structure the html file. Everything within the html is embedded in these three basic tags.

1) The html tag, which contains/encloses the other two tags.

2) The head tag, which contains the meta tags and the title tags.

3) The body tag, which contains the entire content of the page, including all other tags that will be mentioned in subsequent write-ups.

essential info:

   - most HTML tags have an opening tag containing the tag name and possibly tag attributes; and a closing tag containing a forward slash, and the tag name being closed. 

  - always specify in the text editor the ‘doc type’ to be html.