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Subhash's HTML Primer (Tutorial)

< With XHTML & XML References >

What is HTML?

HTML can be called as the language of the web. The HTML language specifications are issued by World Wide Web Consortium.

Tools Required

You don't need any special tool for learning HTML. In most cases, you already have access to these tools. The tools required are:

Text Editor - Notepad (in Windows), BBEdit (in Mac) or Emacs (in Linux).
Web Browser - Netscape, Opera or Internet Explorer.

Tags? What?

Tags are HTML codes. These are placed within "<" and ">" braces. Example tags are:

<center>
<img>

Tags are usually closed by a corresponding closing tag. The closing tags have "/" just after "<" brace. Example:

data here
<center>data here</center>

Some tags just do not have closing tags. We will call them singleton tags. Example of such tags:

<img>
<input>

Note: XHTML standards require you to place "/" symbol just before ">" of singleton tags.

Attributes

You may embed some additional information in your tags using attributes. Example:

"align" is the attribute which takes the value "center". HTML standards specify certain attributes to be present with certain tags. But most attributes are optional, as is the align attribute of the tag . Note that attribute values must be placed within double-quotes.

Case Sensitivity

HTML is not case-sensitive language. Thus <HTML> and <html> mean the same. But future standards, including XHTML and XML require you to compulsorily use lowercase tags.

Structure of HTML Documents

The HTML document is divided into two parts. The <head> section and the <body> section. The <head> section contains information about the document. The <body> section contains the content with HTML formatting.