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HTML is an acronym which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is the language that many webpages are created in. It was designed to be a simple way for non-programmers to share ideas and experiences on the internet. Every HTML document has a basic structure:
<HTML>
<head><title>Title Bar Message</title></head>
<body>
The substance of the page is entered here.
</body>
</HTML>
All of the words enclosed the < > marks are called elements, or more familiarly tags. All of the tags (with a few exceptions) require that there be an opening tag <html> and a closing tag </html>. This tells the browser where the tag begins and ends.
The document, as presented above, consists of the: <HTML> opening tag at the top which tells the browser that the document is an HTML document and an </HTML> tag at the bottom to close the document.
A header tag <head></head> which contains the basic information about the page including:
The <title> tag: all of the information within the open and close of this tag will be displayed above the menu bar in the browser title bar.
The <meta> tags: information for search engine bots
The <style> tags: formating information (this is an advanced topic we will cover later)
The opening body tag <body> tag marks the beginning of the actual webpage content.
The closing body tag </body> tag marks the end of the webpage content and is usually immediately followed by the closing html tag.
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