Prerequisites

• None

HTML(Hypertext Markup Language) is sometimes defined as the structure of web pages.

When you get started with learning web development, you are often faced with three things to learn:

1. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
2. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
3. Javascript

In this post we will be taking apart HTML, understanding what it is and how to get started writing it.

What is HTML

HTML is a markup language. What this means is that, it is a language that uses special characters called 'tags' to create and structure elements of a website, like paragraphs, images and text, that can be read by a computer. HTML markup is usually saved in a file with the extension .html or .htm.

HTML unlike other languages used in building websites is not a programming language. The major difference between HTML and a programming language is that HTML cannot perform functions or create dynamic functionality in a website.

HTML is generally used to define the structure of a website. For example, as you build your website, you would need to add text, images, create paragraphs and probably insert tables, HTML has special tags for each of these needs. The p tag below creates a paragraph of text:

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit.</p>

HTML STRUCTURE

HTML is written using special characters called tags, enclosed in angled brackets, <>. In almost all HTML tags, there is an opening tag and a closing tag, the closing tag is differentiated by adding a backtick /:

• <>: Opening tag
• </>: Closing tag

You can see an example of a HTML document below:

<div>
  <p>Mary had a little lamb</p>
   <img src="http://example.com/images" alt="this is a picture of Mary">
    <a href="http://example.com">Click here to see Mary</a>
</div>

Explanation

• <div></div> tag is used to show a section or division of related code

• <p></p> tag is used to denote a paragraph of text.

• <img/> is a special tag used for inserting images into HTML files. It is a self closing tag, meaning you do not have to explicitly define an </img> closing tag when you use it.
• <a></a> tag is called an anchor tag, it is used to define hyperlinks(a.k.a links) in a HTML document. The href attribute is the URL location the a tag links to.

Creating your first HTML document

You will need the following to do this exercise

1. Notepad
2. Google Chrome (or any web browser of your choice)

STEP 1:

Open up your Notepad and type the following code into it.

<div>
    <h1>I am the biggest heading</h1>
    <h2>I am a bigger heading</h2>
    <h3>I am a big heading</h3>

    <p>I am a paragraph</p>
    <p>My name is <span>[insert your name here]</span></p>
</div>

STEP 2:

Save your file as index.html. You can save your file with any name, however, the file extension must either be .html or .htm.

STEP 3:

Double click on the file to open it in your default browser, you should have a view like the image below

Congratulations, you just created your first HTML document.

There are more tags that can be used in a HTML document, you can check out a full list here.

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