What is HTML? Learn about the HyperText Markup Language

Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash.

HTML means HyperText Markup Language, which is the standard markup language for developing web pages. It is a vital and basic step in web development. It elucidates the design and structure of a web page. HyperText refers to “Text within Text”. A text contains a link within it. If you click on a link that leads to a new webpage, then you have clicked on a hypertext. It is a method to connect two or more web pages (HTML documents) with each other. Markup language speaks a computer language that is undertaken to bring layout in effect and formatting conventions to a text document. This language makes the text more engaged with a dynamic view. It can change text into tables, images and links.

A web page is a document that is stated in HTML language and a web browser does translation work. A web page can be recognised by entering an URL. It has two types, namely static web design or dynamic web design. One can create static web pages with the support of web pages.

HTML comprises a series of elements and these communicate the browser regarding the content display. Its elements attach pieces of content such as “this is a heading”, “this is a paragraph”, “this is a link” and others. The enclosing tags can make a word or image hyperlink to another place and can italicize words or make the font bigger or smaller accordingly. Failing to include a closing tag is one of the standard errors in the beginning and can produce different results.

Two types of HTML elements

Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash.

a) Structural elements: These are the HTML elements that arrange the content of a web page. Structural elements such as <div> and <span> are taken into consideration to indicate block-level content (content that uses the full width of its “container” or page) versus inline content (content that only uses the space between its tags), while elements like <header> contain the header content of a page, <footer> consists of the footer content.

b) Meta elements: These are HTML elements that users don’t view when they come to a webpage, but provide web browsers extra information about the page such as things like the author of the document, keywords, the time and date it was last altered, etc. These are primarily used for an official log that is kept on the SEO service provider’s end or for running the website for search engine results, making it in Google search whenever a person searches any keyword topic related to the website.

Attributes are mentioned in the opening tag. They consist of the attribute name, an equal sign and a value in double-quotes. These are directions that can be included in HTML tags which could give more details about elements. For example, <p = align=”right”> This is my paragraph!</p> an HTML element like a paragraph can have an attribute for how it’s aligned (left, center or right).

HTML code can be written as a simple text HTML document in any text editor or word processing program which is fundamental after which it gets saved as an HTML file with .html at last. There is no special hardware required other than a standard computer. Those .html files then become the foundation for a website’s individual pages and are placed digitally as a live website through a method known as web hosting. Web browsers which engage with HTML pages are able to translate the tags and text and enable them into the final product on the screens of the visitors.

Many more programming languages and techniques are needed to attain effective outcomes beyond static web pages (features such as interactive forms, animated graphics and photo slideshows).