The digital world thrives on websites, and at the cornerstone of every website is HTML, an acronym for HyperText Markup Language. This comprehensive beginner’s guide is tailor-made to equip you with the basics of HTML, explore its fundamental elements, and set you on an exciting coding journey. Even if you’re an absolute beginner, this guide ensures you’ll walk away with a solid understanding of HTML, ready to dive into more complex programming languages.
What is HTML?
HTML, HyperText Markup Language, is the standard markup language used in the creation of web pages. Its function is to tell web browsers how to interpret and display content on a webpage. Each HTML page, at the most fundamental level, consists of a series of tags containing the website’s content.
The anatomy of an HTML tag
HTML tags or elements are the building blocks of any HTML page. The syntax of an HTML tag includes an opening tag (
- Paragraph: <p>Your content goes here</p>
- Heading: <h1>Your content goes here</h1>
- Image: <img src=”yourimage.jpg” alt=”image description”>
Setting up the HTML Document Structure
Before we dive in to create HTML pages, it’s important to understand the basic structure of an HTML document. Here it is:
<!DOCTYPE html>
My First Heading
My first paragraph.
Understanding HTML Elements and their Attributes
As we’ve discussed, HTML tags are the building blocks of HTML pages. Some of the key HTML tags are <html>, <body>, <head>, <title>, <h1> to <h6>, <p>, <a>, and <img>.
Apart from basic tags, HTML also allows you to use attributes within the tags to provide additional information about the element. For instance, the ‘src’ attribute in an <img> tag is used to specify the source URL of an image.
Conclusion
HTML is the backbone of the web and a crucial skill for any aspiring web developer. Understanding its basics ensures a solid foundation, paving way for advancing your coding skills to other languages like CSS, JavaScript, and many more. Part 1 of this guide provides a general understanding of HTML, its tags, elements and their attributes. In part 2, we would delve deeper into the practical use of these elements to build an actual webpage.