HTML - Elements
When you land on a website, all the items you see in front of you -- the
paragraph texts, the page banners, and the navigation links are all elements
of the web page. The term element is a just a name given to any piece
of a web page. Many HTML elements are actually invisible to visitors and
work quietly behind the scenes to provide web crawlers and search
engines useful information about the site.
An element consists of three essential pieces: an opening tag, the content, and a closing tag.
- <p> - opening paragraph tag
- Element Content - "Once upon a time..."
- </p> - closing tag
A Complete HTML Element:
HTML - <html> Element...</html>
<html> is the element that begins and ends each and every web
page. Its sole purpose is to
hold each web element nicely in position and serves the role of book
cover; all other HTML elements are encapsulated within the <html>
element. The tag also lets web browsers know, "Hey, I'm an HTML web
page!", so that the browser knows how to render it. Remember to close
your HTML documents with the corresponding </html> tag to signify
the end of the HTML document.
If you haven't already, it is time to open up Notepad, Notepad++, or Crimson Editor and have a new, blank document ready to go. Copy the following HTML code into your text editor.
HTML Element Code:
If you opened up your index.html document, you should be staring at your very first blank (white) web page!
HTML - <head> Element
The <head> is usually the first element contained inside the
<html> element. While it is also an element container that
encapsulates other HTML elements, these elements are not directly
displayed by a web browser. Instead they function behind the scenes,
providing more descriptive information about the HTML document, like its
page title and other meta data. Other elements used for scripting
(JavaScript) and formatting (CSS) are also contained within the
<head> element, and we will eventually introduce how to utilize
those languages. For now, the head element will continue to lay empty
except for the title element, which will be introduced next.
Here's a sample of the initial setup.
HTML Head Element Code:
If you've made the code changes and refreshed the browser page, you
will notice that we still have nothing happening on the page. So far,
all we've done is add a couple of necessary elements that describe the
web page document to the web browser. Content -- the stuff you can see
-- will come next!
HTML - <title> Element
The <title> element adds a title to a web page. Web page titles
are displayed at the top of any browser window or at the top of browser
tabs. They are probably the first thing seen by web surfers as pages
are loaded, and web pages you bookmark are saved using the web pages'
titles.
A proper title makes a good first impression, and any page caught without a title is considered unprofessional, at best.
HTML Title Element Code:
Save the file and refresh the browser. You should see "My Web Page!" in the upper-left bar of your browser window.
Name your webpage as you please. Just keep in mind that the best titles are brief and descriptive.
HTML - <body> Element
The element that encapsulates all the visual elements (paragraphs,
pictures, tables, etc.) of a web page is the <body> element. We
will be looking at each of these elements in greater detail as the
tutorial progresses, but for now, it's only important to understand that
the body element is one of the four critical web page elements, and it
contains all of the page's viewable content.
HTML Body Element Code:
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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