Terms and Definitions
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
A
ATTRIBUTES
CLASS
HTML elements can have one or more classes, separated by spaces. You can style elements using CSS by selecting them with their classes.
Example
<div class="big-box yellow-box">This is a big yellow box.</div>
ID
An HTML element can have an id attribute to identify it. id elements should always be unique to that single element, and each element should never have more than one id.
Example
<div id="my-box">This is my box! Put your text in some other box.</div>
HREF
Links tell the browser where to go using an href attribute, which stores a URL.
Example
<a href="https://google.com">Google it!</a>
B
Basic Formatting
You can easily format text to be bold, italic, or underlined using simple formatting tags.
Example
This text is <b>bold</b>, <i>italicized</i>, and <u>underlined</u>.
Body
The body is the container for all of a page’s content. Comes after the <head> tag, within the overall <html> tag.
Example
<html>
<head>
<title>An example of the body tag</title>
</head>
<body>
This is inside the body!
</body>
</html>
USAGE
Almost all content belongs inside the body tag. The main exceptions are script and style tags, as well as the page title tag. As you can see in this example, there is a heading, an image, and a link all inside the body tag. The head tag contains only external files and the page title.
Example
<html>
<head>
<title>My homepage</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="homepage.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="homepage.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello, this is a picture of my dog!</h1>
<img src="dog.jpg" />
<a href="mailto:[email protected]">Email my dog</a>
</body>
</html>
C
Children
An element that is an immediate descendent of another element or nested within another element is called a child. These become useful when using CSS child selectors and psuedo-elements.
Example
<ul id="parent"> <li id="child">I'm a child of parent!</li> </ul>
Comments
HTML comments are sometimes used in code to explain parts of the markup. They are similar to comments in other languages. Users do not see comments in their browser.
Example
<!-- This is an HTML comment! -->
D
Div
A block level container (or ‘division’ of the web page) for content with no semantic meaning.
Syntax
<div>This is a div element.</div>
DOCTYPE
Every web page must start with a DOCTYPE declaration. It has to be the very first item on the very first line of your HTML or XHTML code. This tells browsers what version of HTML the web page was coded in, which helps them to know how to process the code. Prior to HTML5, DOCTYPE declarations were long and complex. For example, here's the DOCTYPE declaration for XHTML 1.1:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
In HTML5, the DOCTYPE declaration is much simpler:
<!DOCTYPE html>
E
F
G
H
Head
Tag that surrounds important content that is invisible to the user, but is important to the browser. Elements within this tag contain metadata about the page and links to stylesheets, scripts, etc.
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Headings
Heading elements like <h1>, <h2>, <h3>,... allow you to use six levels of document headings, ranging from largest to smallest, breaking up the document into logical sections. For example, the word ‘Headings’ above is wrapped in a <h3> tag.
Syntax
<h1> This is a header! </h1>
Horizontal rules
This tag creates a black line one pixel thick that runs the all the way across its container. It can be styled to look differently with CSS.
Example
This text is divided <hr> ...from this text!
HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the language used to create all websites.
<HTML> TAG
All HTML files live within an over-arching html tag. This is the basic tag that defines an html document.
Syntax
<html> The rest of your web page goes in here! </html>
Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks (or just links) take the user to another webpage when they click on it. The most common attribute used with links is href, which tells the browser where the link goes.
Syntax
<a href="url this link goes to">Link text</a>
Example
<a href="url this link goes to">Link text</a>
I
Images
The img tag embeds an image into your HTML. Always found with the ‘src’ attribute, which tells the browser where to find the image. Note that the <img/> tag is self-closing.
Syntax
<img src='mylocalimage.jpg'/>
J
K
L
Line breaks
This tag is used in a block of text to force a line break. This is to be used for things which are a single paragraph, but where this formatting is necessary such as poems or addresses. To separate paragraphs, separate each paragraph into a separate element instead.
Example
<p> Some text <br/> that spans two lines </p>
Links
Link elements are used to connect your document to a related resource (very different from hyperlinks, which take you to another webpage when you click on them). Links are most commonly used to connect to a stylesheet, script, favicon, or alternate format of the page such as an RSS feed or PDF.
Example
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" />
Lists
HTML supports two kinds of lists: ordered lists and unordered lists. Within lists each individual list item has its own tag.
UNORDERED LISTS
Unordered lists are just lists whose items are denoted with bullet points.
Example
Shopping list <ul> <li>Dish soap</li> <li>Kitty litter</li> <li>Tomato sauce</li> </ul>
ORDERED LISTS
Ordered lists’ items are denoted with numbers.
Example
My numbered list <ol> <li>First item!</li> <li>Second item!</li> <li>Last item!</li> </ol>
M
N
O
P
Paragraphs <P>
One of the most common tags in HTML - it denotes a paragraph of text. It often has other elements nested inside of it, such as <img />, <a>, <strong> and <em>.
Syntax
<p>This is paragraph text!</p>
Q
R
S
Semantic formatting
These tags are similar to the previously mentioned formatting tags which have fallen out of favor. The difference is that these tags have semantic value (meaning). <em> is used for something that you wish to emphasize and <strong> is used for something that is important. With both of these elements, you can convey the level of emphasis or importance with nesting. The more times that you nest the element within itself, the higher the magnitude of the text it contains.
Example
<p><strong>Warning: Acid can cause severe burns</strong> </p>
Style sheet
A style sheet includes styling syntax (rules) that dictates how your web page will look. Style sheets are very useful as they help web developers create uniform (or consistent) presentation of web pages.
Syntax
Syntax basically refers to the rules a computer language uses to perform a task. Without syntax, a computer language would not be functional or useful at all. HTML syntax dictates what and how a web page will display.
Syntax error
A syntax error basically refers to a situation in which the rules (or a rule) of the computer language are (is) broken. In HTML, depending on the syntax error you produce, the web page may look completely different than what you had intended.
T
Tables
An element for displaying information in rows and columns. Supports headers and footers for labeling columns. Divides information into rows (denoted by the tr tag) which contain cells (denoted by the td tag).
Example
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Item</th>
<th>Price</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Banana</td>
<td>$56.75</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Yogurt</td>
<td>$12.99</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td>Total</td>
<td>$69.74</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
</table>
Tags & Elements
Tags are basic labels that define and separate parts of your markup into elements. They are comprised of a keyword surrounded by angle brackets <>. Content goes between two tags and the closing one is prefixed with a slash (Note: there are some self-closing HTML tags, like image tags).
Syntax
<tag attribute='value'>content</tag keyword>
Title
This tag tells the browser what to display as the page title at the top and tells search engines what the title of your site is. It goes inside <head> tags. Try and make your page titles descriptive, but not overly verbose.
Example
<title> HTML Glossary </title>
Transitional
(used at the top of a web page to specify HTML version) A document defined as transitional may include deprecated elements and all the new HTML elements. However, the document cannot contain frames.
U
Uploading
Uploading as just opposite of downloading. While uploading simply means moving/sending files to the server, downloading means getting/receiving files from the server.
V
W
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
An organization consisting of representatives from member companies and responsible for making rules for the World Wide Web.
