HTML Introduction

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is the standard language for creating web pages and web applications. HTML describes the structure and content of a web page using tags and attributes. Tags are keywords that define how the browser should display the content. Attributes are additional information that modifies the behavior or appearance of a tag.

In this chapter, we will learn some basic concepts of HTML standards, code editor, HTML benefits, and syntax of HTML, such as elements, attributes, comments and more. We will also see how to use an online editor to write and run HTML code.

HTML Standards:

HTML is developed and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which is responsible for developing web standards. The latest version of HTML is HTML5, which was released in 2014. HTML5 includes new features and improvements over previous versions, such as support for multimedia elements, improved form handling, and better accessibility.

HTML Code Editors

HTML files are plain text files that can be created and edited using any text editor, such as Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on Mac, or IDE like VS code from Microsoft to create, edit and view the HTML file on browser. HTML files use a set of markup tags and attributes to define the structure and content of a web page.

You can use the following code editors and compiler HTML code:

• visualstudio.com (This Advanced Code editor is provided by Microsoft to create, edit and test HTML, CSS, JavaScript and many programming languages. It works in local machine for windows, mac and Linux machines)
• Online code editors such as Jsbin, CodePen and JSFiddle are also available, that allows you to create, edit and test HTML, CSS and JavaScript online.

HTML File Extension:

HTML files typically have a file extension of .html or .htm. When an HTML file is loaded into a web browser, the browser interprets the HTML tags and displays the content of the web page.

How to Use HTML File

To use HTML, you'll need to create a text file and save it with the .html extension. Once you've created the file, you can start adding HTML code to it.

You can use a text editor like Notepad, or vsCode editor to create your HTML files. Here are the steps to follow to create and run HTML file: 

1. Open a text editor.
2. Type the HTML code.
3. Save the file with the .html extension.
4. Open the file in a web browser.

Official HTML Documentation

You can learn more about HTML from official documentation by following this reference: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML

Benefits of HTML:

HTML is essential for creating web pages and is often used in conjunction with other web technologies such as CSS and JavaScript to create dynamic and engaging web pages. HTML allows you to structure content on a web page and define its meaning and relationship to other content, making it more accessible and user-friendly.

HTML has Other several benefits, including:

• Easy to learn: HTML is a relatively simple language, and it's easy to learn even for beginners.
• Platform-independent: HTML can be viewed on any platform that has a web browser, making it a versatile and widely-used language.
• SEO-friendly: HTML provides a way to structure web content, which makes it easier for search engines to index and rank web pages.
• Cost-effective: HTML is a free and open standard, which means that anyone can create and publish web content without having to pay for expensive software or licenses.

HTML Elements

An HTML element is a piece of content on a web page, such as a heading, a paragraph, an image or a link. An element usually consists of a start tag, an end tag and some content between them. For example:

<h1>This is a heading</h1> 
<p>This is a paragraph</p>

HTML Attributes

An attribute is a name-value pair that provides additional information about an element. An attribute is written inside the start tag of an element, after the tag name. The syntax is:

<tagname attribute="value">content</tagname>

For example:

<a href="https://www.google.com">This is a link</a> <img src="logo.png" alt="Logo">

The href attribute specifies the URL of the link. The src attribute specifies the source of the image. The alt attribute specifies an alternative text for the image.

HTML Comments

A comment is a piece of text that is ignored by the browser. It is used to add notes or explanations to the HTML code. A comment starts with <!-- and ends with -->. For example:

<!-- This is a comment --> 
<p>This is not a comment</p>

These are the some basic concept of HTML. In the next chapter we will deep dive more into HTML elements or tags to understand how the whole HTML document works with them and more.

Watch this chapter video on YouTube: