Basic HTML Tags
The most basic HTML tags are those which let the browser know important things about the document itself rather than how to display the body of the document. The following table outlines the HTML tags that define the basic HTML document.
| Opening Tag | Closing Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|
| <!DOCTYPE> | none | Defines the HTML specification your document uses such as
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">. This tag will
be used before the <HTML> tag. |
| <HTML> | </HTML> | Specifies that the document should be interpreted as an HTML
document. This tag should either be the first line in an HTML
document or should be directly after the <!DOCTYPE>
specification. Likewise, the closing tag should be the last line in an
HTML file. |
| <HEAD> | </HEAD> | Specifies an area where the browser can look to for general
information about the document. It requires a <TITLE> tag at the
minimum. |
| <TITLE> | </TITLE> | Specifies the text that will be used for the header of the browser
frame. Some search engines use this text for keyword indexing and
browsers will use this for naming bookmarks if a user chooses to
bookmark your site. So choose your titles well. This tag goes between
the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags. |
| <BASE> | None | Specifies the base URL that all relative links should utilize.
This helps if you move an entire site off its original server and need
to quickly make all relative links work at their new locale. This tag
must appear within the bounds of the <HEAD> element. You will
use this tag only with corresponding HREF attribute such as
<BASE HREF = "www.mydomain.com"> |
| <BODY> | </BODY> | Specifies the information that should be displayed in the browser
window. This is the document itself rather than information "about"
the document. |
| <!-- comment goes here--> | none | You can create comment text that will not be displayed by the
browser by placing it between the <!-- and the -->. Some
browsers also support the <COMMENT></COMMENT> tags. |
| <META> | none | Embeds information about the document. You can use the tag with
the following attributes provided you use it within the bounds of the
<HEAD> element:
<META HTTP-EQUIV = "REFRESH" CONTENT = "10; url=doc2.html"> - Automatic redirection <META NAME = "Description" CONTENT = "a description of page"> - Gives a search engine a description to use <META NAME = "Keywords" CONTENT = "comma separated keywords"> - Gives a search engine help for indexing <META HTTP-EQUIV = "PRAGMA" CONTENT = "no-cache"> - Tells the browser not to cache the page. |
Basic HTML Tags by Example
Consider the following example that creates the minimum web page....
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-/IEFT//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Hello World</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV = "Description" NAME = "Description"
CONTENT = "This page is simply a basic HTML page">
<META HTTP-EQUIV = "Keywords" NAME = "Keywords"
CONTENT = "HTML, learning, example">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<!--This is a comment and comments do not show
up in the browser -->
This is a very simple web page
</BODY>
</HTML>