HTML Overview

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the most widely used language to write Web Pages.

Hypertext refers to the way in which Web pages (HTML documents) are linked together. Thus the link available on a webpage are called Hypertext.

As its name suggests, HTML is a Markup Language which means you use HTML to simply "mark up" a text document with tags that tell a Web browser how to structure it to display.

Originally, HTML was developed with the intent of defining the structure of documents like headings, paragraphs, lists, and so forth to facilitate the sharing of scientific information between researchers.

Now, HTML is being widely used to format web pages with the help of different tags available in HTML language.

Basic HTML Document

In its simplest form, following is an example of an HTML document:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>This is document title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>

Either you can use Try it option available at the top right corner of the code box to check the result of this HTML code, or let's save it in an HTML file test.htmusing your favorite text editor. Finally open it using a web browser like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, or Firefox etc. It must show the following output:

HTML Tags

As told earlier, HTML is a markup language and makes use of various tags to format the content. These tags are enclosed within angle braces <Tag Name>. Except few tags, most of the tags have their corresponding closing tags. For example <html> has its closing tag </html> and <body> tag has its closing tag </body> tag etc.

Above example of HTML document uses folloiwng tags:

Tag	Description
<!DOCTYPE...>	This tag defines the document type and HTML version.
<html>	This tag encloses the complete HTML document and mainly comprises of document header which is represented by<head>...</head> and document body which is represented by <body>...</body> tags.
<head>	This tag represents the document's header which can keep other HTML tags like <title>, <link> etc.
<title>	The <title> tag is used inside the <head> tag to mention the document title.
<body>	This tag represents the document's body which keeps other HTML tags like <h1>, <div>, <p> etc.
<h1>	This tag represents the heading.
<p>	This tag represents a paragraph.

To learn HTML, you will need to study various tags and understand how do they behave while formatting a textual document. Learning HTML is simple as users have to learn the usage of different tags in order to format the text or images to make a beautiful webpage.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends to use lowercase tags starting from HTML 4.

HTML Document Structure

A typical HTML document will have following structure:

Document declaration tag

<html>
   <head>
       Document header related tags
   </head>

   <body>
       Document body related tags
   </body>
</html>

We will study all the header and body tags in subsequent chapters, for now let's see what is document declaration tag.

The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration

The <!DOCTYPE> declaration tag is used by the web browser to understand the version of the HTML used in the document. Current version of HTML is 5 and it makes use of the following declaration:

<!DOCTYPE html>

There are many other declaration types which can be used in HTML document depending on what version of HTML is being used. We will see more details on this while discussing <!DOCTYPE...> tag along with other HTML tags.

HTML Basic Tags

Heading Tags

Any document starts with a heading. You can use different sizes for your headings. HTML also has six levels of headings, which use the elements <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, and <h6>. While displaying any heading, browser adds one line before and one line after that heading.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Heading Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is heading 1</h1>
<h2>This is heading 2</h2>
<h3>This is heading 3</h3>
<h4>This is heading 4</h4>
<h5>This is heading 5</h5>
<h6>This is heading 6</h6>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Paragraph Tag

The <p> tag offers a way to structure your text into different paragraphs. Each paragraph of text should go in between an opening <p> and a closing </p> tag as shown below in the example:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Paragraph Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Here is a first paragraph of text.</p>
<p>Here is a second paragraph of text.</p>
<p>Here is a third paragraph of text.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Here is a first paragraph of text.

Here is a second paragraph of text.

Here is a third paragraph of text.

Line Break Tag

Whenever you use the <br /> element, anything following it starts from the next line. This tag is an example of an empty element, where you do not need opening and closing tags, as there is nothing to go in between them.

The <br /> tag has a space between the characters br and the forward slash. If you omit this space, older browsers will have trouble rendering the line break, while if you miss the forward slash character and just use <br> it is not valid in XHTML

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Line Break  Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello<br />
You delivered your assignment ontime.<br />
Thanks<br />
Mahnaz</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Hello
You delivered your assignment ontime.
Thanks
Mahnaz

Centering Content

You can use <center> tag to put any content in the center of the page or any table cell.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Centring Content Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This text is not in the center.</p>
<center>
<p>This text is in the center.</p>
</center>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This text is not in the center.

This text is in the center.

Horizontal Lines

Horizontal lines are used to visually break up sections of a document. The <hr>tag creates a line from the current position in the document to the right margin and breaks the line accordingly.

For example you may want to give a line between two paragraphs as in the given example below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Horizontal Line Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is paragraph one and should be on top</p>
<hr />
<p>This is paragraph two and should be at bottom</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is paragraph one and should be on top

This is paragraph two and should be at bottom

Again <hr /> tag is an example of the empty element, where you do not need opening and closing tags, as there is nothing to go in between them.

The <hr /> element has a space between the characters hr and the forward slash. If you omit this space, older browsers will have trouble rendering the horizontak line, while if you miss the forward slash character and just use <hr> it is not valid in XHTML

Preserve Formatting

Sometimes you want your text to follow the exact format of how it is written in the HTML document. In those cases, you can use the preformatted tag <pre>.

Any text between the opening <pre> tag and the closing </pre> tag will preserve the formatting of the source document.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Preserve Formatting Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<pre>
function testFunction( strText ){
   alert (strText)
}
</pre>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

function testFunction( strText ){
   alert (strText)
}

Try using same code without keeping it inside <pre>...</pre> tags

Non-breaking Spaces

Suppose you want to use the phrase "12 Angry Men." Here you would not want a browser to split the "12, Angry" and "Men" across two lines:

An example of this technique appears in the movie "12 Angry Men."

In cases where you do not want the client browser to break text, you should use a non-breaking space entity   instead of a normal space. For example, when coding the "12 Angry Men" in a paragraph, you should use something similar to the following code:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Non-breaking Spaces Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>An example of this technique appears in the movie "12&nbsp;Angry&nbsp;Men."</p>
</body>
</html>

HTML Elements

An HTML element is defined by a starting tag. If the element contains other content, it ends with a closing tag, where the element name is preceded by a forward slash as shown below with few tags:

Start Tag	Content	End Tag
<p>	This is paragraph content.	</p>
<h1>	This is heading content.	</h1>
<div>	This is division content.	</div>
<br />

So here <p>....</p> is an HTML element, <h1>...</h1> is another HTML element. There are some HTML elements which don't need to be closed, such as <img.../>, <hr /> and <br /> elements. These are known as void elements.

HTML documents consist of a tree of these elements and they specify how HTML documents should be built, and what kind of content should be placed in what part of an HTML document.

HTML Tag vs. Element

An HTML element is defined by a starting tag. If the element contains other content, it ends with a closing tag.

For example <p> is starting tag of a paragraph and </p> is closing tag of the same paragraph but <p>This is paragraph</p> is a paragraph element.

Nested HTML Elements

It is very much allowed to keep one HTML element inside another HTML element:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Nested Elements Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>This is <i>italic</i> heading</h1>
<p>This is <u>underlined</u> paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>

This will display following result:

This is italic heading

This is underlined paragraph

HTML Attributes

We have seen few HTML tags and their usage like heading tags <h1>, <h2>, paragraph tag <p> and other tags. We used them so far in their simplest form, but most of the HTML tags can also have attributes, which are extra bits of information.

An attribute is used to define the characteristics of an HTML element and is placed inside the element's opening tag. All attributes are made up of two parts: a name and a value:

The name is the property you want to set. For example, the paragraph <p> element in the example carries an attribute whose name is align, which you can use to indicate the alignment of paragraph on the page.
The value is what you want the value of the property to be set and always put within quotations. The below example shows three possible values of align attribute: left, center and right.

Attribute names and attribute values are case-insensitive. However, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends lowercase attributes/attribute values in their HTML 4 recommendation.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Align Attribute  Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p align="left">This is left aligned</p>
<p align="center">This is center aligned</p>
<p align="right">This is right aligned</p>
</body>
</html>

This will display following result:

This is left aligned

This is center aligned

This is right aligned

Core Attributes

The four core attributes that can be used on the majority of HTML elements (although not all) are:

title

class

style

The id Attribute

The id attribute of an HTML tag can be used to uniquely identify any element within an HTML page. There are two primary reasons that you might want to use an id attribute on an element:

If an element carries an id attribute as a unique identifier it is possible to identify just that element and its content.
If you have two elements of the same name within a Web page (or style sheet), you can use the id attribute to distinguish between elements that have the same name.

We will discuss style sheet in separate tutorial. For now, let's use the id attribute to distinguish between two paragraph elements as shown below.

EXAMPLE

<p id="html">This para explains what is HTML</p>
<p id="css">This para explains what is Cascading Style Sheet</p>

The title Attribute

The title attribute gives a suggested title for the element. They syntax for thetitle attribute is similar as explained for id attribute:

The behavior of this attribute will depend upon the element that carries it, although it is often displayed as a tooltip when cursor comes over the element or while the element is loading.

EXAMPLE

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>The title Attribute Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h3 title="Hello HTML!">Titled Heading Tag Example</h3>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Titled Heading Tag Example

Now try to bring your cursor over "Titled Heading Tag Example" and you will see that whatever title you used in your code is coming out as a tooltip of the cursor.

The class Attribute

The class attribute is used to associate an element with a style sheet, and specifies the class of element. You will learn more about the use of the class attribute when you will learn Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). So for now you can avoid it.

The value of the attribute may also be a space-separated list of class names. For example:

class="className1 className2 className3"

The style Attribute

The style attribute allows you to specify Casecading Style Sheet (CSS) rules within the element.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>The style Attribute</title>
</head>
<body>
<p style="font-family:arial; color:#FF0000;">Some text...</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Some text...

At this point of time, we are not learning CSS, so just let's proceed without bothering much about CSS. Here you need to understand what are HTML attributes and how they can be used while formatting content.

Internationalization Attributes

There are three internationalization attributes, which are available for most (although not all) XHTML elements.

dir
lang
xml:lang

The dir Attribute

The dir attribute allows you to indicate to the browser the direction in which the text should flow. The dir attribute can take one of two values, as you can see in the table that follows:

Value	Meaning
ltr	Left to right (the default value)
rtl	Right to left (for languages such as Hebrew or Arabic that are read right to left)

EXAMPLE

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="rtl">
<head>
<title>Display Directions</title>
</head>
<body>
This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.

When dir attribute is used within the <html> tag, it determines how text will be presented within the entire document. When used within another tag, it controls the text's direction for just the content of that tag.

The lang Attribute

The lang attribute allows you to indicate the main language used in a document, but this attribute was kept in HTML only for backwards compatibility with earlier versions of HTML. This attribute has been replaced by the xml:lang attribute in new XHTML documents.

The values of the lang attribute are ISO-639 standard two-character language codes. Check HTML Language Codes: ISO 639 for a complete list of language codes.

EXAMPLE

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>English Language Page</title>
</head>
<body>
This page is using English Language
</body>
</html>

The xml:lang Attribute

The xml:lang attribute is the XHTML replacement for the lang attribute. The value of the xml:lang attribute should be an ISO-639 country code as mentioned in previous section.

Generic Attributes

Here's a table of some other attributes that are readily usable with many of the HTML tags.

Attribute	Options	Function
align	right, left, center	Horizontally aligns tags
valign	top, middle, bottom	Vertically aligns tags within an HTML element.
bgcolor	numeric, hexidecimal, RGB values	Places a background color behind an element
background	URL	Places a background image behind an element
id	User Defined	Names an element for use with Cascading Style Sheets.
class	User Defined	Classifies an element for use with Cascading Style Sheets.
width	Numeric Value	Specifies the width of tables, images, or table cells.
height	Numeric Value	Specifies the height of tables, images, or table cells.
title	User Defined	"Pop-up" title of the elements.

We will see related examples as we will proceed to study other HTML tags. For a complete list of HTML Tags and related attributes please check reference to HTML Tags List.

HTML Formatting

If you use a word processor, you must be familiar with the ability to make text bold, italicized, or underlined; these are just three of the ten options available to indicate how text can appear in HTML and XHTML.

Bold Text

Anything that appears within <b>...</b> element, is displayed in bold as shown below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Bold Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <b>bold</b> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a bold typeface.

Italic Text

Anything that appears within <i>...</i> element is displayed in italicized as shown below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Italic Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <i>italicized</i> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a italicized typeface.

Underlined Text

Anything that appears within <u>...</u> element, is displayed with underline as shown below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Underlined Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <u>underlined</u> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a underlined typeface.

Strike Text

Anything that appears within <strike>...</strike> element is displayed with strikethrough, which is a thin line through the text as shown below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Strike Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <strike>strikethrough</strike> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a ~~strikethrough~~ typeface.

Monospaced Font

The content of a <tt>...</tt> element is written in monospaced font. Most of the fonts are known as variable-width fonts because different letters are of different widths (for example, the letter 'm' is wider than the letter 'i'). In a monospaced font, however, each letter has the same width.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Monospaced Font Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <tt>monospaced</tt> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a monospaced typeface.

Superscript Text

The content of a <sup>...</sup> element is written in superscript; the font size used is the same size as the characters surrounding it but is displayed half a character's height above the other characters.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Superscript Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <sup>superscript</sup> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a ^superscript typeface.

Subscript Text

The content of a <sub>...</sub> element is written in subscript; the font size used is the same as the characters surrounding it, but is displayed half a character's height beneath the other characters.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Subscript Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <sub>subscript</sub> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a _subscript typeface.

Inserted Text

Anything that appears within <ins>...</ins> element is displayed as inserted text.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Inserted Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>I want to drink <del>cola</del> <ins>wine</ins></p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

I want to drink
~~cola~~
wine

Deleted Text

Anything that appears within <del>...</del> element, is displayed as deleted text.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Deleted Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>I want to drink <del>cola</del> <ins>wine</ins></p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

I want to drink
~~cola~~
wine

Larger Text

The content of the <big>...</big> element is displayed one font size larger than the rest of the text surrounding it as shown below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Larger Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <big>big</big> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a big typeface.

Smaller Text

The content of the <small>...</small> element is displayed one font size smaller than the rest of the text surrounding it as shown below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Smaller Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <small>small</small> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a small typeface.

Grouping Content

The <div> and <span> elements allow you to group together several elements to create sections or subsections of a page.

For example, you might want to put all of the footnotes on a page within a <div> element to indicate that all of the elements within that <div> element relate to the footnotes. You might then attach a style to this <div> element so that they appear using a special set of style rules.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Div Tag Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="menu" align="middle" >
<a href="/index.htm">HOME</a> | 
<a href="/about/contact_us.htm">CONTACT</a> | 
<a href="/about/index.htm">ABOUT</a>
</div>

<div id="content" align="left" bgcolor="white">
<h5>Content Articles</h5>
<p>Actual content goes here.....</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

CONTENT ARTICLES

Actual content goes here.....

The <span> element, on the other hand, can be used to group inline elements only. So, if you have a part of a sentence or paragraph which you want to group together, you could use the <span> element as follows

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Span Tag Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is the example of <span style="color:green">span tag</span> and the <span style="color:red">div tag</span> alongwith CSS</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is the example of span tag and the div tag alongwith CSS

These tags are commonly used with CSS to allow you to attach a style to a section of a page.

HTML Phrase Tags

The phrase tags have been designed for specific purposes, though they are displayed in a similar way as other basic tags like <b>, <i>, <pre>, and <tt>, you have seen in previous chapter. This chapter will take you through all the important phrase tags, so let's start seeing them one by one.

Emphasized Text

Anything that appears within <em>...</em> element is displayed as emphasized text.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Emphasized Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <em>emphasized</em> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a emphasized typeface.

Marked Text

Anything that appears with-in <mark>...</mark> element, is displayed as marked with yellow ink.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Marked Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word has been <mark>marked</mark> with yellow</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word has been marked with yellow.

Strong Text

Anything that appears within <strong>...</strong> element is displayed as important text.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Strong Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word uses a <strong>strong</strong> typeface.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word uses a strong typeface.

Text Abbreviation

You can abbreviate a text by putting it inside opening <abbr> and closing</abbr> tags. If present, the title attribute must contain this full description and nothing else.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Text Abbreviation</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>My best friend's name is  <abbr title="Abhishek">Abhy</abbr>.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

My best friend's name is Abhy.

Acronym Element

The <acronym> element allows you to indicate that the text between <acronym> and </acronym> tags is an acronym.

At present, the major browsers do not change the appearance of the content of the <acronym> element.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Acronym Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This chapter covers marking up text in <acronym>XHTML</acronym>.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This chapter covers marking up text in XHTML.

Text Direction

The <bdo>...</bdo> element stands for Bi-Directional Override and it is used to override the current text direction.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Text Direction Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This text will go left to right.</p>
<p><bdo dir="rtl">This text will go right to left.</bdo></p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This text will go left to right.

This text will go right to left.

Special Terms

The <dfn>...</dfn> element (or HTML Definition Element) allows you to specify that you are introducing a special term. It's usage is similar to italic words in the midst of a paragraph.

Typically, you would use the <dfn> element the first time you introduce a key term. Most recent browsers render the content of a <dfn> element in an italic font.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Special Terms Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following word is a <dfn>special</dfn> term.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following word is a special term.

Quoting Text

When you want to quote a passage from another source, you should put it in between <blockquote>...</blockquote> tags.

Text inside a <blockquote> element is usually indented from the left and right edges of the surrounding text, and sometimes uses an italicized font.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Blockquote Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>The following description of XHTML is taken from the W3C Web site:</p>

<blockquote>XHTML 1.0 is the W3C's first Recommendation for XHTML, following on from earlier work on HTML 4.01, HTML 4.0, HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0.</blockquote>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The following description of XHTML is taken from the W3C Web site:

XHTML 1.0 is the W3C's first Recommendation for XHTML, following on from earlier work on HTML 4.01, HTML 4.0, HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0.

Short Quotations

The <q>...</q> element is used when you want to add a double quote within a sentence.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Double Quote Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Amit is in Spain, <q>I think I am wrong</q>.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Amit is in Spain, I think I am wrong.

Text Citations

If you are quoting a text, you can indicate the source placing it between an opening <cite> tag and closing </cite> tag

As you would expect in a print publication, the content of the <cite> element is rendered in italicized text by default.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Citations Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This HTML tutorial is derived from <cite>W3 Standard for HTML</cite>.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This HTML tutorial is derived from W3 Standard for HTML.

Computer Code

Any programming code to appear on a Web page should be placed inside<code>...</code> tags. Usually the content of the <code> element is presented in a monospaced font, just like the code in most programming books.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Computer Code Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Regular text. <code>This is code.</code> Regular text.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Regular text. This is code. Regular text.

Keyboard Text

When you are talking about computers, if you want to tell a reader to enter some text, you can use the <kbd>...</kbd> element to indicate what should be typed in, as in this example.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Keyboard Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Regular text. <kbd>This is inside kbd element</kbd> Regular text.</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Regular text. This is inside kbd element Regular text.

Programming Variables

This element is usually used in conjunction with the <pre> and <code>elements to indicate that the content of that element is a variable.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Variable Text Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p><code>document.write("<var>user-name</var>")</code></p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

document.write("user-name")

Program Output

The <samp>...</samp> element indicates sample output from a program, and script etc. Again, it is mainly used when documenting programming or coding concepts.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Program Output Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Result produced by the program is <samp>Hello World!</samp></p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Result produced by the program is Hello World!

Address Text

The <address>...</address> element is used to contain any address.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Address Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<address>388A, Road No 22, Jubilee Hills -  Hyderabad</address>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

388A, Road No 22, Jubilee Hills - Hyderabad

HTML Tag Reference

Following tags have been introduced in older versions of HTML but all the tags marked with HTML-5

are part of HTML-5.

Tag	Description	Version
<!--...-->	Specifies a comment
<!DOCTYPE>	Specifies the document type
<a>	Specifies an anchor
<abbr>	Specifies an abbreviation
<acronym>	Specifies an acronym
<address>	Specifies an address element
<applet>	Deprecated. Specifies an applet
<area>	Specifies an area inside an image map
<article>	Specifies an article
<aside>	Specifies some content loosely related to the page content. If it is removed, the remaining content still makes sense
<audio>	Specifies a sound content
<b>	Specifies bold text
<base>	Specifies a base URL for all the links in a page
<basefont>	Deprecated. Specifies a base font
<bdo>	Specifies the direction of text display
<bdi>	Represents text that must be isolated from its surrounding for bidirectional text formatting. It allows embedding a span of text with a different, or unknown, directionality
<bgsound>	Specifies background music
<big>	Specifies big text
<blink>	Specifies a text which blinks
<blockquote>	Specifies a long quotation
<body>	Specifies the body element
<br>	Inserts a single line break
<button>	Specifies a push button
<canvas>	For making graphics with a script
<caption>	Specifies a table caption
<center>	Deprecated. Specifies centered text
<cite>	Specifies a citation
<code>	Specifies computer code text
<col>	Specifies attributes for table columns
<colgroup>	Specifies groups of table columns
<comment>	Puts a comment in the document
<datalist>	A list of options for input values
<dd>	Specifies a definition description
<del>	Specifies deleted text
<dfn>	Specifies a definition term
<dialog>	Specifies a dialog box or window
<dir>	Deprecated. Specifies a directory list
<div>	Specifies a section in a document
<dl>	Specifies a definition list
<dt>	Specifies a definition term
<em>	Specifies emphasized text
<embed>	Specifies a container for an external (non-HTML) application
<fieldset>	Specifies a fieldset
<figcaption>	Specifies a caption for a <figure> element
<figure>	Specifies self-contained content
<font>	Deprecated. Specifies text font, size, and color
<footer>	Specifies a footer for a document or section
<form>	Specifies a form
<frame>	Specifies a sub window (a frame)
<frameset>	Specifies a set of frames
<h1> to <h6>	Specifies header 1 to header 6
<head>	Specifies information about the document
<header>	Specifies a header for a document or section
<hr>	Specifies a horizontal rule
<html>	Specifies an html document
<i>	Specifies italic text
<iframe>	Specifies an inline sub window (frame)
<ilayer>	Specifies an inline layer
<img>	Specifies an image
<input>	Specifies an input field
<ins>	Specifies inserted text
<isindex>	Deprecated. Specifies a single-line input field
<kbd>	Specifies keyboard text
<keygen>	Generate key information in a form
<label>	Specifies a label for a form control
<layer>	Specifies a layer
<legend>	Specifies a title in a fieldset
<li>	Specifies a list item
<link>	Specifies a resource reference
<main>	Specifies the main or important content in the document. There is only one element in the document
<map>	Specifies an image map
<mark>	Specifies a text highlighted for reference purposes, that is for its relevance in another context
<marquee>	Creates a scrolling-text marquee
<menu>	Deprecated. Specifies a menu list
<menuitem>	Specifies a command/menu item that the user can invoke from a popup menu
<meta>	Specifies meta data of an html document which is not displayed on the page
<meter>	Specifies a scalar measurement within a known range (a gauge)
<multicol>	Specifies a multicolumn text flow
<nav>	Specifies a section that contains only navigation links
<nobr>	No breaks allowed in the enclosed text
<noembed>	Specifies content to be presented by browsers that do not support the <embed> tag
<noframes>	Specifies a noframe section
<noscript>	Specifies a noscript section
<object>	Specifies an embedded object
<ol>	Specifies an ordered list
<optgroup>	Specifies an option group
<option>	Specifies an option in a drop-down list
<output>	Specifies the result of a calculation
<p>	Specifies a paragraph
<param>	Specifies a parameter for an object
<plaintext>	Deprecated. Render the remainder of the document as preformatted plain text
<pre>	Specifies preformatted text
<progress>	Specifies a completion progress of a task
<q>	Specifies a short quotation
<rp>	Specifies to show browsers that do not support the ruby element
<rt>	Specifies an text ruby annotation
<ruby>	Specifies an ruby annotation
<s>	Deprecated. Specifies strikethrough text
<samp>	Specifies sample computer code
<script>	Specifies a script
<section>	Specifies a section in a document
<select>	Specifies a selectable list
<spacer>	Specifies a white space
<small>	Specifies small text
<source>	Specifies a media resources for media elements, defined inside video or audio elements
<span>	Specifies a section in a document
<strike>	Deprecated. Specifies strikethrough text
<strong>	Specifies strong text
<style>	Specifies a style definition
<sub>	Specifies subscripted text
<summary>	Specifies a summary, caption, or legend for a given <details>
<sup>	Specifies superscripted text
<table>	Specifies a table
<tbody>	Specifies a table body
<td>	Specifies a table cell
<textarea>	Specifies a text area
<tfoot>	Specifies a table footer
<th>	Specifies a table heading
<thead>	Specifies a table header
<time>	Specifies a date and time <details>
<title>	Specifies the document title
<tr>	Specifies a table row
<track>	Specifies a text tracks used in mediaplayers
<tt>	Specifies teletype text
<u>	Deprecated. Specifies underlined text
<ul>	Specifies an unordered list
<var>	Specifies a variable
<video>	Specifies a text tracks used in mediaplayers
<wbr>	Indicates a potential word break point within a <nobr> section
<xmp>	Deprecated. Specifies preformatted text

HTML Meta Tags

HTML lets you specify metadata - additional important information about a document in a variety of ways. The META elements can be used to include name/value pairs describing properties of the HTML document, such as author, expiry date, a list of keywords, document author etc.

The <meta> tag is used to provide such additional information. This tag is an empty element and so does not have a closing tag but it carries information within its attributes.

You can include one or more meta tags in your document based on what information you want to keep in your document but in general, meta tags do not impact physical appearance of the document so from appearance point of view, it does not matter if you include them or not.

Adding Meta Tags to Your Documents

You can add metadata to your web pages by placing <meta> tags inside the header of the document which is represented by <head> and </head> tags. A meta tag can have following attributes in addition to core attributes:

Attribute	Description
Name	Name for the property. Can be anything. Examples include, keywords, description, author, revised, generator etc.
content	Specifies the property's value.
scheme	Specifies a scheme to interpret the property's value (as declared in the content attribute).
http-equiv	Used for http response message headers. For example http-equiv can be used to refresh the page or to set a cookie. Values include content-type, expires, refresh and set-cookie.

Specifying Keywords

You can use <meta> tag to specify important keywords related to the document and later these keywords are used by the search engines while indexing your webpage for searching purpose.

Example

Following is an example where we are adding HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata as important keywords about the document.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Hello HTML5!

Document Description

You can use <meta> tag to give a short description about the document. This again can be used by various search engines while indexing your webpage for searching purpose.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

Document Revision Date

You can use <meta> tag to give information about when last time the document was updated. This information can be used by various web browsers while refreshing your webpage.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
<meta name="revised" content="The Knowledge Tree, 21/5/2016" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

Document Refreshing

A <meta> tag can be used to specify a duration after which your web page will keep refreshing automatically.

Example

If you want your page keep refreshing after every 5 seconds then use the following syntax.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
<meta name="revised" content="The Knowledge Tree, 21/5/2016" />
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

Page Redirection

You can use <meta> tag to redirect your page to any other webpage. You can also specify a duration if you want to redirect the page after a certain number of seconds.

Example

Following is an example of redirecting current page to another page after 5 seconds. If you want to redirect page immediately then do not specify content attribute.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
<meta name="revised" content="The Knowledge Tree, 21/5/2016" />
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5; url=https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

Setting Cookies

Cookies are data, stored in small text files on your computer and it is exchanged between web browser and web server to keep track of various infromation based on your web application need.

You can use <meta> tag to store cookies on client side and later this information can be used by the Web Server to track a site visitor.

Example

Following is an example of redirecting current page to another page after 5 seconds. If you want to redirect page immediately then do not specify contentattribute.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
<meta name="revised" content="The Knowledge Tree, 21/5/2016" />
<meta http-equiv="cookie" content="userid=xyz; expires=Wednesday, 08-Aug-17 23:59:59 GMT;" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

If you do not include the expiration date and time, the cookie is considered a session cookie and will be deleted when the user exits the browser.

Note: You can check PHP and Cookies tutorial for a complete detail on Cookies.

Setting Author Name

You can set an author name in a web page using meta tag. See an example below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
<meta name="author" content="Mahnaz Mohtashim" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

Specify Character Set

You can use <meta> tag to specify character set used within the webpage.

Example

By default, Web servers and Web browsers use ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) encoding to process Web pages. Following is an example to set UTF-8 encoding:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
<meta name="author" content="Mahnaz Mohtashim" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

To serve the static page with traditional Chinese characters, the webpage must contain a <meta> tag to set Big5 encoding:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Meta Tags Example</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML, Meta Tags, Metadata" />
<meta name="description" content="Learning about Meta Tags." />
<meta name="author" content="Mahnaz Mohtashim" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Big5" />
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello HTML5!</p>
</body>
</html>

HTML Comments

Comment is a piece of code which is ignored by any web browser. It is a good practice to add comments into your HTML code, especially in complex documents, to indicate sections of a document, and any other notes to anyone looking at the code. Comments help you and others understand your code and increases code readability.

HTML comments are placed in between  tags. So any content placed with-in  tags will be treated as comment and will be completely ignored by the browser.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>  <!-- Document Header Starts -->
<title>This is document title</title>
</head> <!-- Document Header Ends -->
<body>
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result without displaying the content given as a part of comments:

Document content goes here.....

Valid vs Invalid Comments

Comments do not nest which means a comment can not be put inside another comment. Second the double-dash sequence "--" may not appear inside a comment except as part of the closing --> tag. You must also make sure that there are no spaces in the start-of-comment string.

Example

Here given comment is a valid comment and will be wiped off by the browser.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Valid Comment Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<!--   This is valid comment -->
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>

But following line is not a valid comment and will be displayed by the browser. This is because there is a space between the left angle bracket and the exclamation mark.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>  
<title>Invalid Comment Example</title>
</head> 
<body>
< !--   This is not a valid comment -->
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

< !-- This is not a valid comment -->

Document content goes here.....

Multiline Comments

So far we have seen single line comments, but HTML supports multi-line comments as well.

You can comment multiple lines by the special beginning tag  placed before the first line and end of the last line as shown in the given example below.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>  
<title>Multiline Comments</title>
</head> 
<body>
<!--   
This is a multiline comment and it can
span through as many as lines you like.
-->
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Document content goes here.....

Conditional Comments

Conditional comments only work in Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows but they are ignored by other browsers. They are supported from Explorer 5 onwards, and you can use them to give conditional instructions to different versions of IE.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>  
<title>Conditional Comments</title>

<!--[if IE 6]>
   Special instructions for IE 6 here
<![endif]-->

</head> 
<body>
<p>Document content goes here.....</p>
</body>
</html>

You will come across a situation where you will need to apply a different style sheet based on different versions of Internet Explorer, in such situation conditional comments will be helpful.

Using Comment Tag

There are few browsers that support <comment> tag to comment a part of HTML code.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>
<title>Using Comment Tag</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is <comment>not</comment> Internet Explorer.</p>
</body>
</html>

If you are using IE then it will produce following result:

This is Internet Explorer.

But if you are not using IE, then it will produce following result:

This is not Internet Explorer.

Commenting Script Code

Though you will learn Javascript with HTML, in a separate tutorial, but here you must make a note that if you are using Java Script or VB Script in your HTML code then it is recommended to put that script code inside proper HTML comments so that old browsers can work properly.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>
<title>Commenting Script Code</title>
<script>
<!-- 
   document.write("Hello World!")
//-->
</script>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello , World!</p>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Hello World!

Hello , World!

Commenting Style Sheets

Though you will learn using style sheets with HTML in a separate tutorial, but here you must make a note that if you are using Casecading Style Sheet (CSS) in your HTML code then it is recommended to put that style sheet code inside proper HTML comments so that old browsers can work properly.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html><html>
<head>
<title>Commenting Style Sheets</title>
<style>
<!--
.example {
  border:1px solid #4a7d49;
}
//-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="example">Hello , World!</div>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Hello , World!

HTML Images

Images are very important to beautify as well as to depict many complex concepts in simple way on your web page. This tutorial will take you through simple steps to use images in your web pages.

Insert Image

You can insert any image in your web page by using <img> tag. Following is the simple syntax to use this tag.

<img src="Image URL" ... attributes-list/>

The <img> tag is an empty tag, which means that it can contain only list of attributes and it has no closing tag.

Example

To try following example, let's keep our HTML file test.htm and image file test.png in the same directory:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Using Image in Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Simple Image Insert</p>
<img src="/html/images/test.png" alt="Test Image" />
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Simple Image Insert

You can use PNG, JPEG or GIF image file based on your comfort but make sure you specify correct image file name in src attribute. Image name is always case sensitive.

The alt attribute is a mandatory attribute which specifies an alternate text for an image, if the image cannot be displayed.

Set Image Location

Usually we keep our all the images in a separate directory. So let's keep HTML file test.htm in our home directory and create a subdirectory images inside the home directory where we will keep our image test.png.

Example

Assuming our image location is "/html/image/test.png", try the following example:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Using Image in Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Simple Image Insert</p>
<img src="/html/images/test.png" alt="Test Image" />
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Simple Image Insert

Set Image Width/Height

You can set image width and height based on your requirement using width and height attributes. You can specify width and height of the image in terms of either pixels or percentage of its actual size.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Set Image Width and Height</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Setting image width and height</p>
<img src="/html/images/test.png" alt="Test Image" width="150" height="100"/>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Set Image Border

By default image will have a border around it, you can specify border thickness in terms of pixels using border attribute. A thickness of 0 means, no border around the picture.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Set Image Border</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Setting image Border</p>
<img src="/html/images/test.png" alt="Test Image" border="3"/>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Setting image Alignment

HTML Tables

The HTML tables allow web authors to arrange data like text, images, links, other tables, etc. into rows and columns of cells.

The HTML tables are created using the <table> tag in which the <tr> tag is used to create table rows and <td> tag is used to create data cells.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Tables</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td>Row 1, Column 1</td>
<td>Row 1, Column 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Row 2, Column 1</td>
<td>Row 2, Column 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Row 1, Column 1	Row 1, Column 2
Row 2, Column 1	Row 2, Column 2

Here border is an attribute of <table> tag and it is used to put a border across all the cells. If you do not need a border then you can use border="0".

Table Heading

Table heading can be defined using <th> tag. This tag will be put to replace <td> tag, which is used to represent actual data cell. Normally you will put your top row as table heading as shown below, otherwise you can use <th> element in any row.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Header</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Salary</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ramesh Raman</td>
<td>5000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Shabbir Hussein</td>
<td>7000</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Name	Salary
Ramesh Raman	5000
Shabbir Hussein	7000

Cellpadding and Cellspacing Attributes

There are two attribiutes called cellpadding and cellspacing which you will use to adjust the white space in your table cells. The cellspacing attribute defines the width of the border, while cellpadding represents the distance between cell borders and the content within a cell.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Cellpadding</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5">
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Salary</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Ramesh Raman</td>
<td>5000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Shabbir Hussein</td>
<td>7000</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Name	Salary
Ramesh Raman	5000
Shabbir Hussein	7000

Colspan and Rowspan Attributes

You will use colspan attribute if you want to merge two or more columns into a single column. Similar way you will use rowspan if you want to merge two or more rows.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Colspan/Rowspan</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
<th>Column 3</th>
</tr>
<tr><td rowspan="2">Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>Row 1 Cell 2</td><td>Row 1 Cell 3</td></tr>
<tr><td>Row 2 Cell 2</td><td>Row 2 Cell 3</td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="3">Row 3 Cell 1</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
Row 1 Cell 1	Row 1 Cell 2	Row 1 Cell 3
Row 1 Cell 1	Row 2 Cell 2	Row 2 Cell 3
Row 3 Cell 1

Tables Backgrounds

You can set table background using one of the following two ways:

bgcolor attribute - You can set background color for whole table or just for one cell.

background attribute - You can set background image for whole table or just for one cell.

You can also set border color also using bordercolor attribute.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Background</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" bordercolor="green" bgcolor="yellow">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
<th>Column 3</th>
</tr>
<tr><td rowspan="2">Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>Row 1 Cell 2</td><td>Row 1 Cell 3</td></tr>
<tr><td>Row 2 Cell 2</td><td>Row 2 Cell 3</td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="3">Row 3 Cell 1</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
Row 1 Cell 1	Row 1 Cell 2	Row 1 Cell 3
Row 1 Cell 1	Row 2 Cell 2	Row 2 Cell 3
Row 3 Cell 1

Here is an example of using background attribute. Here we will use an image available in /images directory.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Background</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" bordercolor="green" background="/images/test.png">
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th>
<th>Column 2</th>
<th>Column 3</th>
</tr>
<tr><td rowspan="2">Row 1 Cell 1</td><td>Row 1 Cell 2</td><td>Row 1 Cell 3</td></tr>
<tr><td>Row 2 Cell 2</td><td>Row 2 Cell 3</td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="3">Row 3 Cell 1</td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result. Here background image did not apply to table's header.

Table Height and Width

You can set a table width and height using width and height attrubutes. You can specify table width or height in terms of pixels or in terms of percentage of available screen area.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Width/Height</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" width="400" height="150">
<tr>
<td>Row 1, Column 1</td>
<td>Row 1, Column 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Row 2, Column 1</td>
<td>Row 2, Column 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Row 1, Column 1	Row 1, Column 2
Row 2, Column 1	Row 2, Column 2

Table Caption

The caption tag will serve as a title or explanation for the table and it shows up at the top of the table. This tag is deprecated in newer version of HTML/XHTML.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table Caption</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<caption>This is the caption</caption>
<tr>
<td>row 1, column 1</td><td>row 1, columnn 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>row 2, column 1</td><td>row 2, columnn 2</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is the caption
row 1, column 1	row 1, columnn 2
row 2, column 1	row 2, columnn 2

Table Header, Body, and Footer

Tables can be divided into three portions: a header, a body, and a foot. The head and foot are rather similar to headers and footers in a word-processed document that remain the same for every page, while the body is the main content holder of the table.

The three elements for separating the head, body, and foot of a table are:

<thead> - to create a separate table header.

<tbody> - to indicate the main body of the table.

<tfoot> - to create a separate table footer.

A table may contain several <tbody> elements to indicate different pages or groups of data. But it is notable that <thead> and <tfoot> tags should appear before <tbody>

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<thead>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">This is the head of the table</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">This is the foot of the table</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Cell 1</td>
<td>Cell 2</td>
<td>Cell 3</td>
<td>Cell 4</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is the head of the table
This is the foot of the table
Cell 1	Cell 2	Cell 3	Cell 4

Nested Tables

You can use one table inside another table. Not only tables you can use almost all the tags inside table data tag <td>.

Example

Following is the example of using another table and other tags inside a table cell.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Table</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<tr>
<td>
   <table border="1" width="100%">
   <tr>
   <th>Name</th>
   <th>Salary</th>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Ramesh Raman</td>
   <td>5000</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
   <td>Shabbir Hussein</td>
   <td>7000</td>
   </tr>
   </table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Name	Salary
Ramesh Raman	5000
Shabbir Hussein	7000

HTML Lists

HTML offers web authors three ways for specifying lists of information. All lists must contain one or more list elements. Lists may contain:

<ul> - An unordered list. This will list items using plain bullets.

<ol> - An ordered list. This will use different schemes of numbers to list your items.

<dl> - A definition list. This arranges your items in the same way as they are arranged in a dictionary.

HTML Unordered Lists

An unordered list is a collection of related items that have no special order or sequence. This list is created by using HTML <ul> tag. Each item in the list is marked with a bullet.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Unordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
<li>Beetroot</li>
<li>Ginger</li>
<li>Potato</li>
<li>Radish</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

The type Attribute

You can use type attribute for <ul> tag to specify the type of bullet you like. By default it is a disc. Following are the possible options:

<ul type="square">
<ul type="disc">
<ul type="circle">

Example

Following is an example where we used <ul type="square">

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Unordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ul type="square">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ul>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

Example

Following is an example where we used <ul type="disc"> :

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Unordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ul type="disc">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ul>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

Example

Following is an example where we used <ul type="circle"> :

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Unordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ul type="circle">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ul>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

HTML Ordered Lists

If you are required to put your items in a numbered list instead of bulleted then HTML ordered list will be used. This list is created by using <ol> tag. The numbering starts at one and is incremented by one for each successive ordered list element tagged with <li>.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Ordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
<ol>
<li>Beetroot</li>
<li>Ginger</li>
<li>Potato</li>
<li>Radish</li>
</ol>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

The type Attribute

You can use type attribute for <ol> tag to specify the type of numbering you like. By default it is a number. Following are the possible options:

<ol type="1"> - Default-Case Numerals.
<ol type="I"> - Upper-Case Numerals.
<ol type="i"> - Lower-Case Numerals.
<ol type="a"> - Lower-Case Letters.
<ol type="A"> - Upper-Case Letters.

Example

Following is an example where we used <ol type="1">

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Ordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ol type="1">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ol>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

Example

Following is an example where we used <ol type="I">

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Ordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ol type="I">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ol>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

Example

Following is an example where we used <ol type="i">

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Ordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ol type="i">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ol>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

Example

Following is an example where we used <ol type="A">

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Ordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ol type="A">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ol>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

Example

Following is an example where we used <ol type="a">

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Ordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ol type="a">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ol>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

The start Attribute

You can use start attribute for <ol> tag to specify the starting point of numbering you need. Following are the possible options:

<ol type="1" start="4">    - Numerals starts with 4.
<ol type="I" start="4">    - Numerals starts with IV.
<ol type="i" start="4">    - Numerals starts with iv.
<ol type="a" start="4">    - Letters starts with d.
<ol type="A" start="4">    - Letters starts with D.

Example

Following is an example where we used <ol type="i" start="4" >

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Ordered List</title>
</head>
<body>
   <ol type="i" start="4">
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ol>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

HTML Definition Lists

HTML and XHTML support a list style which is called definition lists where entries are listed like in a dictionary or encyclopedia. The definition list is the ideal way to present a glossary, list of terms, or other name/value list.

Definition List makes use of following three tags.

<dl> - Defines the start of the list

<dt> - A term

<dd> - Term definition

</dl> - Defines the end of the list

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Definition List</title>
</head>
<body>
<dl>
<dt><b>HTML</b></dt>
<dd>This stands for Hyper Text Markup Language</dd>
<dt><b>HTTP</b></dt>
<dd>This stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol</dd>
</dl>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

HTML: This stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTTP: This stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

HTML Text Links

A webpage can contain various links that take you directly to other pages and even specific parts of a given page. These links are known as hyperlinks.

Hyperlinks allow visitors to navigate between Web sites by clicking on words, phrases, and images. Thus you can create hyperlinks using text or images available on a webpage.

Note: I recommend to go through a short tutorial on Understanding URL

Linking Documents

A link is specified using HTML tag <a>. This tag is called anchor tag and anything between the opening <a> tag and the closing </a> tag becomes part of the link and a user can click that part to reach to the linked document. Following is the simple syntax to use <a> tag.

<a href="Document URL" ... attributes-list>Link Text</a>

Example

Let's try following example which links https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/ at your page:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hyperlink Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Click following link</p>
<a href="https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/" target="_self">Tutorials Point</a>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result, where you can click on the link generated The Knowledge Tree to reach to the home page of Tutorials Point.

Click following link

Tutorials Point

The target Attribute

We have used target attribute in our previous example. This attribute is used to specify the location where linked document is opened. Following are possible options:

Option	Description
_blank	Opens the linked document in a new window or tab.
_self	Opens the linked document in the same frame.
_parent	Opens the linked document in the parent frame.
_top	Opens the linked document in the full body of the window.
targetframe	Opens the linked document in a named targetframe.

Example

Try following example to understand basic difference in few options given for target attribute.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hyperlink Example</title>
<base href="https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/">
</head>
<body>
<p>Click any of the following links</p>
<a href="/html/index.htm" target="_blank">Opens in New</a> |
<a href="/html/index.htm" target="_self">Opens in Self</a> |
<a href="/html/index.htm" target="_parent">Opens in Parent</a> |
<a href="/html/index.htm" target="_top">Opens in Body</a>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result, where you can click on different links to understand the difference between various options given for target attribute.

Click any of the following links

Opens in New | Opens in Self | Opens in Parent | Opens in Body

Use of Base Path

When you link HTML documents related to the same website, it is not required to give a complete URL for every link. You can get rid of it if you use <base>tag in your HTML document header. This tag is used to give a base path for all the links. So your browser will concatenate given relative path to this base path and will make a complete URL.

Example

Following example makes use of <base> tag to specify base URL and later we can use relative path to all the links instead of giving complete URL for every link.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hyperlink Example</title>
<base href="https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/">
</head>
<body>
<p>Click following link</p>
<a href="/html/index.htm" target="_blank">HTML Tutorial</a>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result, where you can click on the link generated HTML Tutorial to reach to the HTML tutorial.

Now given URL <a href="/html/index.htm" is being considered as <a href="https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/html/index.htm".

Click following link

HTML Tutorial

Linking to a Page Section

You can create a link to a particular section of a given webpage by using name attribute. This is a two step process.

First create a link to the place where you want to reach with-in a webpage and name it using <a...> tag as follows:

<h1>HTML Text Links <a name="top"></a></h1>

Second step is to create a hyperlink to link the document and place where you want to reach:

<a href="/html/html_text_links.htm#top">Go to the Top</a>

This will produce following link, where you can click on the link generated Go to the Top to reach to the top of the HTML Text Link tutorial.

Go to the Top

Setting Link Colors

You can set colors of your links, active links and visited links using link, alinkand vlink attributes of <body> tag.

Example

Save the following in test.htm and open it in any web browser to see how link,alink and vlink attributes work.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hyperlink Example</title>
<base href="https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/">
</head>
<body alink="#54A250" link="#040404" vlink="#F40633">
<p>Click following link</p>
<a href="/html/index.htm" target="_blank" >HTML Tutorial</a>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result. Just check color of the link before clicking on it, next check its color when you activate it and when the link has been visited.

Click following link

HTML Tutorial

Download Links

You can create text link to make your PDF, or DOC or ZIP files downloadable. This is very simple, you just need to give complete URL of the downloadable file as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hyperlink Example</title>
</head>
<a href="https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/page.pdf">Download PDF File</a>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following link and will be used to download a file.

Download PDF File

File Download Dialog Box

Sometimes it is desired that you want to give an option where a user will click a link and it will pop up a "File Download" box to the user in stead of displaying actual content. This is very easy and can be achieved using an HTTP header in your HTTP response.

For example, if you want make a FileName file downloadable from a given link then its syntax will be as follows.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Addtional HTTP Header
print "Content-Type:application/octet-stream; name=\"FileName\"\r\n";
print "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"FileName\"\r\n\n";

# Open the target file and list down its content as follows
open( FILE, "<FileName" );
while(read(FILE, $buffer, 100)){
   print("$buffer");
}

HTML Image Links

We have seen how to create hypertext link using text and we also learnt how to use images in our webpages. Now we will learn how to use images to create hyperlinks.

Example

It's simple to use an image as hyperlink. We just need to use an image inside hyperlink at the place of text as shown below:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Image Hyperlink Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Click following link</p>
<a href="https://freeknowledg.blogspot.in/" target="_self"> 
   <img src="/images/logo.png" alt="Tutorials Point" border="0"/> 
</a>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result, where you can click on the images to reach to the home page of Tutorials Point.

Click following link

This was the simplest way of creating hyperlinks using images. Next we will see how we can create Mouse-Sensitive Image Links.

Mouse-Sensitive Images

The HTML and XHTML standards provide a feature that lets you embed many different links inside a single image. You can create different links on the single image based on different coordinates available on the image. Once different are links attached to different coordinates, we can click different parts of the image to open target documents. Such mouse-sensitive images are known as image maps.

There are two ways to create image maps:

Sserver-side image maps - This is enabled by the ismap attribute of the <img> tag and requires access to a server and related image-map processing applications.

Client-side image maps - This is created with the usemap attribute of the <img> tag, along with corresponding <map> and <area> tags.

Server-Side Image Maps

Here you simply put your image inside a hyper link and use ismap attribute which makes it special image and when the user clicks some place within the image, the browser passes the coordinates of the mouse pointer along with the URL specified in the <a> tag to the web server. The server uses the mouse-pointer coordinates to determine which document to deliver back to the browser.

When ismap is used, the href attribute of the containing <a> tag must contain the URL of a server application like a cgi or PHP script etc. to process the incoming request based on the passed coordinates.

The coordinates of the mouse position are screen pixels counted from the upper-left corner of the image, beginning with (0,0). The coordinates, preceded by a question mark, are added to the end of the URL.

For example, if a user clicks 20 pixels over and 30 pixels down from the upper-left corner of the following image:

Click following link

Which has been generated by the following code snippet:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>ISMAP Hyperlink Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Click following link</p>
<a href="/cgi-bin/ismap.cgi" target="_self"> 
   <img ismap src="/images/logo.png" alt="Tutorials Point" border="0"/> 
</a>
</body>
</html>

Then the browser sends the following search parameters to the web server which can be processed by ismap.cgi script or map file and you can link whatever documents you like to these coordinates:

/cgi-bin/ismap.cgi?20,30

This way you can assign different links to different coordinates of the image and when those coordinates are clicked, you can open corresponding linked document. To learn more about ismap attribute, you can check How to use Image ismap?

Note: You will learn CGI programming when you will study Perl programming. You can write your script to process these passed coordinates using PHP or any other script as well. For now let's concentrate on learning HTML and later you can revisit this section.

Client-Side Image Maps

Client side image maps are enabled by the usemap attribute of the <img /> tag and defined by special <map> and <area> extension tags.

The image that is going to form the map is inserted into the page using the <img /> tag as a normal image, except it carries an extra attribute calledusemap. The value of the usemap attribute is the value which will be used in a <map> tag to link map and image tags. The <map> along with <area> tags define all the image coordinates and corresponding links.

The <area> tag inside the map tag, specifies the shape and the coordinates to define the boundaries of each clickable hotspot available on the image. Here's an example from the image map:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>USEMAP Hyperlink Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Search and click the hotspot</p>
<img src=/images/html.gif alt="HTML Map" border="0" usemap="#html"/>
<!-- Create  Mappings -->
<map name="html">
   <area shape="circle" 
   coords="80,80,20" href="/css/index.htm" alt="CSS Link" target="_self" />
   <area shape="rect" 
   coords="5,5,40,40" alt="jQuery Link" href="/jquery/index.htm" target="_self" />
</map>
</body>
</html>

Coordinate System

The actual value of coords is totally dependent on the shape in question. Here is a summary, to be followed by detailed examples:

rect = x₁ , y₁ , x₂ , y₂: x₁ and y₁ are the coordinates of the upper left corner of the rectangle; x₂and y₂ are the coordinates of the lower right corner.
circle = x_c , y_c , radius: x_c and y_c are the coordinates of the center of the circle, and radius is the circle's radius. A circle centered at 200,50 with a radius of 25 would have the attribute coords="200,50,25"
poly = x₁ , y₁ , x₂ , y₂ , x₃ , y₃ , ... x_n , y_n: The various x-y pairs define vertices (points) of the polygon, with a "line" being drawn from one point to the next point. A diamond-shaped polygon with its top point at 20,20 and 40 pixels across at its widest points would have the attribute coords="20,20,40,40,20,60,0,40".

All coordinates are relative to the upper-left corner of the image (0,0). Each shape has a related URL.You can use any image software to know the coordinates of different positions.

HTML Email Links

Its not difficult to put an HTML email link on your webpage but it can cause unnecessary spamming problem for your email account. There are people who can run programs to harvest these types of emails and later use them for spamming in various ways.

You can have another options to facilitate people to send you emails. One option could be to use HTML forms to collect user data and then use PHP or CGI script to send an email.

A simple example, check our Contact Us Form. We take user feedback using this form and then we are using one CGI program which is collecting this information and sending us email to one given email ID.

Note: You will learn about HTML Forms in HTML Forms and you will learn about CGI in our another tutorial Perl CGI Programming.

HTML Email Tag

HTML <a> tag provides you option to specifiy an email address to send an email. While using <a> tag as an email tag, you will use mailto:email address along with href attribute. Following is the syntax of using mailtoinstead of using http.

<a href= "mailto:abc@example.com">Send Email</a>

This code will generate following link which you can use to send email.

Send Email

Now if a user clicks this link, it launches one Email Client ( like Lotus Notes, Outlook Express etc. ) installed on your user's computer. There is another risk to use this option to send email because if user do not have email client installed on their computer then it would not be possible to send email.

Default Settings

You can specify a default email subject and email body alongwith your email address. Following is the example to use default subject and body.

<a href="mailto:abc@example.com?subject=Feedback&body=Message">
Send Feedback
</a>

This code will generate following link which you can use to send email.

Send Feedback

HTML Frames

HTML frames are used to divide your browser window into multiple sections where each section can load a separate HTML document. A collection of frames in the browser window is known as a frameset. The window is divided into frames in a similar way the tables are organized: into rows and columns.

Disadvantages of Frames

There are few drawbacks with using frames, so it's never recommended to use frames in your webpages:

Some smaller devices cannot cope with frames often because their screen is not big enough to be divided up.
Sometimes your page will be displayed differently on different computers due to different screen resolution.
The browser's back button might not work as the user hopes.
There are still few browsers that do not support frame technology.

Creating Frames

To use frames on a page we use <frameset> tag instead of <body> tag. The <frameset> tag defines how to divide the window into frames. The rowsattribute of <frameset> tag defines horizontal frames and cols attribute defines vertical frames. Each frame is indicated by <frame> tag and it defines which HTML document shall open into the frame.

Example

Following is the example to create three horizontal frames:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Frames</title>
</head>
<frameset rows="10%,80%,10%">
   <frame name="top" src="/html/top_frame.htm" />
   <frame name="main" src="/html/main_frame.htm" />
   <frame name="bottom" src="/html/bottom_frame.htm" />
   <noframes>
   <body>
      Your browser does not support frames.
   </body>
   </noframes>
</frameset>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Example

Let's put above example as follows, here we replaced rows attribute by cols and changed their width. This will create all the three frames vertically:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Frames</title>
</head>
<frameset cols="25%,50%,25%">
   <frame name="left" src="/html/top_frame.htm" />
   <frame name="center" src="/html/main_frame.htm" />
   <frame name="right" src="/html/bottom_frame.htm" />
   <noframes>
   <body>
      Your browser does not support frames.
   </body>
   </noframes>
</frameset>
</html>

This will produce following result:

The <frameset> Tag Attributes

Following are important attributes of the <frameset> tag:

Attribute	Description
cols	specifies how many columns are contained in the frameset and the size of each column. You can specify the width of each column in one of four ways: Absolute values in pixels. For example to create three vertical frames, use cols="100, 500,100". A percentage of the browser window. For example to create three vertical frames, use cols="10%, 80%,10%". Using a wildcard symbol. For example to create three vertical frames, use cols="10%, ,10%". In this case wildcard takes remainder of the window. As relative widths of the browser window. For example to create three vertical frames, use cols="3,2,1". This is an alternative to percentages. You can use relative widths of the browser window. Here the window is divided into sixths: the first column takes up half of the window, the second takes one third, and the third takes one sixth.
rows	This attribute works just like the cols attribute and takes the same values, but it is used to specify the rows in the frameset. For example to create two horizontal frames, use rows="10%, 90%". You can specify the height of each row in the same way as explained above for columns.
border	This attribute specifies the width of the border of each frame in pixels. For example border="5". A value of zero means no border.
frameborder	This attribute specifies whether a three-dimensional border should be displayed between frames. This attrubute takes value either 1 (yes) or 0 (no). For example frameborder="0" specifies no border.
framespacing	This attribute specifies the amount of space between frames in a frameset. This can take any integer value. For example framespacing="10" means there should be 10 pixels spacing between each frames.

The <frame> Tag Attributes

Following are important attributes of <frame> tag:

Attribute	Description
src	This attribute is used to give the file name that should be loaded in the frame. Its value can be any URL. For example, src="/html/top_frame.htm" will load an HTML file available in html directory.
name	This attribute allows you to give a name to a frame. It is used to indicate which frame a document should be loaded into. This is especially important when you want to create links in one frame that load pages into an another frame, in which case the second frame needs a name to identify itself as the target of the link.
frameborder	This attribute specifies whether or not the borders of that frame are shown; it overrides the value given in the frameborder attribute on the <frameset> tag if one is given, and this can take values either 1 (yes) or 0 (no).
marginwidth	This attribute allows you to specify the width of the space between the left and right of the frame's borders and the frame's content. The value is given in pixels. For example marginwidth="10".
marginheight	This attribute allows you to specify the height of the space between the top and bottom of the frame's borders and its contents. The value is given in pixels. For example marginheight="10".
noresize	By default you can resize any frame by clicking and dragging on the borders of a frame. The noresize attribute prevents a user from being able to resize the frame. For example noresize="noresize".
scrolling	This attribute controls the appearance of the scrollbars that appear on the frame. This takes values either "yes", "no" or "auto". For example scrolling="no" means it should not have scroll bars.
longdesc	This attribute allows you to provide a link to another page containing a long description of the contents of the frame. For example longdesc="framedescription.htm"

Browser Support for Frames

If a user is using any old browser or any browser which does not support frames then <noframes> element should be displayed to the user.

So you must place a <body> element inside the <noframes> element because the <frameset> element is supposed to replace the <body> element, but if a browser does not understand <frameset> element then it should understand what is inside the <body> element which is contained in a <noframes> element.

You can put some nice message for your user having old browsers. For exampleSorry!! your browser does not support frames. as shown in the above example.

Frame's name and target attributes

One of the most popular uses of frames is to place navigation bars in one frame and then load main pages into a separate frame.

Let's see following example where a test.htm file has following code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Target Frames</title>
</head>
<frameset cols="200, *">
   <frame src="/html/menu.htm" name="menu_page" />
   <frame src="/html/main.htm" name="main_page" />
   <noframes>
   <body>
      Your browser does not support frames.
   </body>
   </noframes>
</frameset>
</html>

Here we have created two columns to fill with two frames. The first frame is 200 pixels wide and will contain the navigation menubar implemented bymenu.htm file. The second column fills in remaining space and will contain the main part of the page and it is implemented by main.htm file. For all the three links available in menubar, we have mentioned target frame as main_page, so whenever you click any of the links in menubar, available link will open in main_page.

Following is the content of menu.htm file

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body bgcolor="#4a7d49">
<a href="http://www.google.com" target="main_page">Google</a>
<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com" target="main_page">Microsoft</a>
<br /><br />
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk" target="main_page">BBC News</a>
</body>
</html>

Following is the content of main.htm file:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body bgcolor="#b5dcb3">
<h3>This is main page and content from any link will be displayed here.</h3>
<p>So now click any link and see the result.</p>
</body>
</html>

When we load test.htm file, it produces following result:

Now you can try to click links available in the left panel and see the result. Thetarget attribute can also take one of the following values:

Option	Description
_self	Loads the page into the current frame.
_blank	Loads a page into a new browser window.opening a new window.
_parent	Loads the page into the parent window, which in the case of a single frameset is the main browser window.
_top	Loads the page into the browser window, replacing any current frames.
targetframe	Loads the page into a named targetframe.

HTML Blocks

All the HTML elements can be categorized into two categories (a) Block Level Elements (b) Inline Elements

Block Elements

Block elements appear on the screen as if they have a line break before and after them. For example the <p>, <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6>, <ul>, <ol>, <dl>, <pre>, <hr />, <blockquote>, and <address> elements are all block level elements. They all start on their own new line, and anything that follows them appears on its own new line.

Inline Elements

Inline elements, on the other hand, can appear within sentences and do not have to appear on a new line of their own. The <b>, <i>, <u>, <em>, <strong>, <sup>, <sub>, <big>, <small>, <li>, <ins>, <del>, <code>, <cite>, <dfn>, <kbd>, and <var> elements are all inline elements.

Grouping HTML Elements

There are two important tags which we use very frequently to group various other HTML tags (i) <div> tag and (ii) <span> tag

The <div> tag

This is the very important block level tag which plays a big role in grouping various other HTML tags and applying CSS on group of elements. Even now <div> tag can be used to create webpage layout where we define different parts ( Left, Right, Top etc) of the page using <div> tag. This tag does not provide any visual change on the block but this has more meaning when it is used with CSS.

Example

Following is a simple example of <div> tag. We will learn Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) in a separate chapter but we used it here to show the usage of <div> tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML div Tag</title>
</head>
<body>

<!-- First group of tags -->
<div style="color:red">
   <h4>This is first group</h4>
   <p>Following is a list of vegetables</p>
   <ul>
   <li>Beetroot</li>
   <li>Ginger</li>
   <li>Potato</li>
   <li>Radish</li>
   </ul>
</div>

<!-- Second group of tags -->
<div style="color:green">
   <h4>This is second group</h4>
   <p>Following is a list of fruits</p>
   <ul>
   <li>Apple</li>
   <li>Banana</li>
   <li>Mango</li>
   <li>Strawberry</li>
   </ul>
</div>

</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

THIS IS FIRST GROUP

Following is a list of vegetables

Beetroot
Ginger
Potato
Radish

THIS IS SECOND GROUP

Following is a list of fruits

Apple
Banana
Mango
Strawberry

The <span> tag

The HTML <span> is an inline element and it can be used to group inline-elements in an HTML document. This tag also does not provide any visual change on the block but has more meaning when it is used with CSS.

The difference between the <span> tag and the <div> tag is that the <span> tag is used with inline elements where as the <div> tag is used with block-level elements.

Example

Following is a simple example of <span> tag. We will learn Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) in a separate chapter but we used it here to show the usage of <span> tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML span Tag</title>
</head>
<body>

<p>This is <span style="color:red">red</span> and this is <span style="color:green">green</span></p>

</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is red, and this is green

HTML Backgrounds

By default, your webpage background is white in color. You may not like it, but no worries. HTML provides you following two good ways to decorate your webpage background.

Html Background with Colors
Html Background with Images

Now let's see both the approaches one by one using appropriate examples.

Html Background with Colors

The bgcolor attribute is used to control the background of an HTML element, specifically page body and table backgrounds. Following is the syntax to use bgcolor attribute with any HTML tag.

<tagname bgcolor="color_value"...>

This color_value can be given in any of the following formats:

<!-- Format 1 - Use color name -->
<table bgcolor="lime" >
 
<!-- Format 2 - Use hex value -->
<table bgcolor="#f1f1f1" >
 
<!-- Format 3 - Use color value in RGB terms -->
<table bgcolor="rgb(0,0,120)" >

Example

Here are the examples to set background of an HTML tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Background Colors</title>
</head>
<body>

<!-- Format 1 - Use color name -->
<table bgcolor="yellow" width="100%">
<tr><td>
This background is yellow
</td></tr>
</table>
 
<!-- Format 2 - Use hex value -->
<table bgcolor="#6666FF" width="100%">
<tr><td>
This background is sky blue
</td></tr>
</table>
 
<!-- Format 3 - Use color value in RGB terms -->
<table bgcolor="rgb(255,0,255)"  width="100%">
<tr><td>
This background is green
</td></tr>
</table>

</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This background is yellow

This background is sky blue

This background is green

Html Background with Images

The background attribute can also be used to control the background of an HTML elmement, specifically page body and table backgrounds. You can specify an image to set background of your HTML page or table. Following is the syntax to use background attribute with any HTML tag.

Note: The background attribute is deprecated and it is recommended to use Style Sheet for background setting.

<tagname background="Image URL"...>

The most frequently used image formats are JPEG, GIF and PNG images.

Example

Here are the examples to set background images of a table.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Background Images</title>
</head>
<body>

<!-- Set table background -->
<table background="/images/html.gif" width="100%" height="100">
<tr><td>
This background is filled up with HTML image.
</td></tr>
</table>
 
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This background is filled up with HTML image.

Patterned & Transparent Backgrounds

You might have seen many pattern or transparent backgrounds on various websites. This simply can be achieved by using patterned image or transparent image in the background.

It is suggested that while creating patterns or transparent GIF or PNG images, use the smallest dimensions possible even as small as 1x1 to avoid slow loading.

Example

Here are the examples to set background pattern of a table:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Background Images</title>
</head>
<body>

<!-- Set a table background using pattrern -->
<table background="/images/pattern1.gif" width="100%" height="100">
<tr><td>
This background is filled up with a pattern image.
</td></tr>
</table>

<!-- Another example on table background using pattrern -->
<table background="/images/pattern2.gif" width="100%" height="100">
<tr><td>
This background is filled up with a pattern image.
</td></tr>
</table>
 
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This background is filled up with a pattern image.

HTML Colors

Colors are very important to give a good look and feel to your website. You can specify colors on page level using <body> tag or you can set colors for individual tags using bgcolor attribute.

The <body> tag has following attributes which can be used to set different colors:

bgcolor - sets a color for the background of the page.
text - sets a color for the body text.
alink - sets a color for active links or selected links.
link - sets a color for linked text.
vlink - sets a color for visited links - that is, for linked text that you have already clicked on.

HTML Color Coding Methods

There are following three different methods to set colors in your web page:

Color names - You can specify color names directly like green, blue or red.
Hex codes - A six-digit code representing the amount of red, green, and blue that makes up the color.
Color decimal or percentage values - This value is specified using the rgb( ) property.

Now we will see these coloring schemes one by one.

HTML Colors - Color Names

You can sepecify direct a color name to set text or background color. W3C has listed 16 basic color names that will validate with an HTML validator but there are over 200 different color names supported by major browsers.

Note: Check a complete list of HTML Color Name.

W3C Standard 16 Colors

Here is the list of W3C Standard 16 Colors names and it is recommended to use them.

Black	Gray	Silver	White
Yellow	Lime	Aqua	Fuchsia
Red	Green	Blue	Purple
Maroon	Olive	Navy	Teal

EXAMPLE

Here are the examples to set background of an HTML tag by color name:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Colors by Name</title>
</head>
<body text="blue" bgcolor="green">
<p>Use different color names for for body and table and see the result.</p>
<table bgcolor="black">
<tr>
<td>
<font color="white">This text will appear white on black background.</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

HTML Colors - Hex Codes

A hexadecimal is a 6 digit representation of a color. The first two digits(RR) represent a red value, the next two are a green value(GG), and the last are the blue value(BB).

A hexadecimal value can be taken from any graphics software like Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or MS Paint.

Each hexadecimal code will be preceded by a pound or hash sign #. Following is a list of few colors using hexadecimal notation.

Color	Color HEX
	#000000
	#FF0000
	#00FF00
	#0000FF
	#FFFF00
	#00FFFF
	#FF00FF
	#C0C0C0
	#FFFFFF

EXAMPLE

Here are the examples to set background of an HTML tag by color code in hexadecimal:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Colors by Hex</title>
</head>
<body text="#0000FF" bgcolor="#00FF00">
<p>Use different color hexa for for body and table and see the result.</p>
<table bgcolor="#000000">
<tr>
<td>
<font color="#FFFFFF">This text will appear white on black background.</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

HTML Colors - RGB Values

This color value is specified using the rgb( ) property. This property takes three values, one each for red, green, and blue. The value can be an integer between 0 and 255 or a percentage.

Note: All the browsers does not support rgb() property of color so it is recommended not to use it.

Following is a list to show few colors using RGB values.

Color	Color RGB
	rgb(0,0,0)
	rgb(255,0,0)
	rgb(0,255,0)
	rgb(0,0,255)
	rgb(255,255,0)
	rgb(0,255,255)
	rgb(255,0,255)
	rgb(192,192,192)
	rgb(255,255,255)

EXAMPLE

Here are the examples to set background of an HTML tag by color code using rgb() values:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML Colors by RGB code</title>
</head>
<body text="rgb(0,0,255)" bgcolor="rgb(0,255,0)">
<p>Use different color code for for body and table and see the result.</p>
<table bgcolor="rgb(0,0,0)">
<tr>
<td>
<font color="rgb(255,255,255)">This text will appear white on black background.</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Browser Safe Colors

Here is the list of 216 colors which are supposed to be safest and computer independent colors. These colors very from hexa code 000000 to FFFFFF and they will be supported by all the computers having 256 color palette.

000000	000033	000066	000099	0000CC	0000FF
003300	003333	003366	003399	0033CC	0033FF
006600	006633	006666	006699	0066CC	0066FF
009900	009933	009966	009999	0099CC	0099FF
00CC00	00CC33	00CC66	00CC99	00CCCC	00CCFF
00FF00	00FF33	00FF66	00FF99	00FFCC	00FFFF
330000	330033	330066	330099	3300CC	3300FF
333300	333333	333366	333399	3333CC	3333FF
336600	336633	336666	336699	3366CC	3366FF
339900	339933	339966	339999	3399CC	3399FF
33CC00	33CC33	33CC66	33CC99	33CCCC	33CCFF
33FF00	33FF33	33FF66	33FF99	33FFCC	33FFFF
660000	660033	660066	660099	6600CC	6600FF
663300	663333	663366	663399	6633CC	6633FF
666600	666633	666666	666699	6666CC	6666FF
669900	669933	669966	669999	6699CC	6699FF
66CC00	66CC33	66CC66	66CC99	66CCCC	66CCFF
66FF00	66FF33	66FF66	66FF99	66FFCC	66FFFF
990000	990033	990066	990099	9900CC	9900FF
993300	993333	993366	993399	9933CC	9933FF
996600	996633	996666	996699	9966CC	9966FF
999900	999933	999966	999999	9999CC	9999FF
99CC00	99CC33	99CC66	99CC99	99CCCC	99CCFF
99FF00	99FF33	99FF66	99FF99	99FFCC	99FFFF
CC0000	CC0033	CC0066	CC0099	CC00CC	CC00FF
CC3300	CC3333	CC3366	CC3399	CC33CC	CC33FF
CC6600	CC6633	CC6666	CC6699	CC66CC	CC66FF
CC9900	CC9933	CC9966	CC9999	CC99CC	CC99FF
CCCC00	CCCC33	CCCC66	CCCC99	CCCCCC	CCCCFF
CCFF00	CCFF33	CCFF66	CCFF99	CCFFCC	CCFFFF
FF0000	FF0033	FF0066	FF0099	FF00CC	FF00FF
FF3300	FF3333	FF3366	FF3399	FF33CC	FF33FF
FF6600	FF6633	FF6666	FF6699	FF66CC	FF66FF
FF9900	FF9933	FF9966	FF9999	FF99CC	FF99FF
FFCC00	FFCC33	FFCC66	FFCC99	FFCCCC	FFCCFF
FFFF00	FFFF33	FFFF66	FFFF99	FFFFCC	FFFFFF

HTML Fonts

Fonts play very important role in making a website more user friendly and increasing content readability. Font face and color depends entirely on the computer and browser that is being used to view your page but you can use HTML <font> tag to add style, size, and color to the text on your website. You can use a <basefont> tag to set all of your text to the same size, face, and color.

The font tag is having three attributes called size, color, and face to customize your fonts. To change any of the font attributes at any time within your webpage, simply use the <font> tag. The text that follows will remain changed until you close with the </font> tag. You can change one or all of the font attributes within one <font> tag.

Note: The font and basefont tags are deprecated and it is supposed to be removed in a future version of HTML. So they should not be used rather, it's suggested to use CSS styles to manipulate your fonts. But still for learning purpose, this chapter will explain font and basefont tags in detail.

Set Font Size

You can set content font size using size attribute. The range of accepted values is from 1(smallest) to 7(largest). The default size of a font is 3.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Setting Font Size</title>
</head>
<body>
<font size="1">Font size="1"</font><br />
<font size="2">Font size="2"</font><br />
<font size="3">Font size="3"</font><br />
<font size="4">Font size="4"</font><br />
<font size="5">Font size="5"</font><br />
<font size="6">Font size="6"</font><br />
<font size="7">Font size="7"</font>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Font size="1"
Font size="2"
Font size="3"
Font size="4"
Font size="5"
Font size="6"
Font size="7"

Relative Font Size

You can specify how many sizes larger or how many sizes smaller than the preset font size should be. You can specify it like <font size="+n"> or <font size="-n">

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Relative Font Size</title>
</head>
<body>
<font size="-1">Font size="-1"</font><br />
<font size="+1">Font size="+1"</font><br />
<font size="+2">Font size="+2"</font><br />
<font size="+3">Font size="+3"</font><br />
<font size="+4">Font size="+4"</font>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Font size="-1"
Font size="+1"
Font size="+2"
Font size="+3"
Font size="+4"

Setting Font Face

You can set font face using face attribute but be aware that if the user viewing the page doesn't have the font installed, they will not be able to see it. Instead user will see the default font face applicable to the user's computer.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Font Face</title>
</head>
<body>
<font face="Times New Roman" size="5">Times New Roman</font><br />
<font face="Verdana" size="5">Verdana</font><br />
<font face="Comic sans MS" size="5">Comic Sans MS</font><br />
<font face="WildWest" size="5">WildWest</font><br />
<font face="Bedrock" size="5">Bedrock</font><br />
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Times New Roman
Verdana
Comic Sans MS
WildWest
Bedrock

Specify alternate font faces

A visitor will only be able to see your font if they have that font installed on their computer. So, it is possible to specify two or more font face alternatives by listing the font face names, separated by a comma.

<font face="arial,helvetica">
<font face="Lucida Calligraphy,Comic Sans MS,Lucida Console">

When your page is loaded, their browser will display the first font face available. If none of the given fonts are installed, then it will display the default font faceTimes New Roman.

Note: Check a complete list of HTML Standard Fonts.

Setting Font Color

You can set any font color you like using color attribute. You can specify the color that you want by either the color name or hexadecimal code for that color.

Note: You can check a complete list of HTML Color Name with Codes.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Setting Font Color</title>
</head>
<body>
<font color="#FF00FF">This text is in pink</font><br />
<font color="red">This text is red</font>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This text is in pink
This text is red

The <basefont> Element:

The <basefont> element is supposed to set a default font size, color, and typeface for any parts of the document that are not otherwise contained within a <font> tag. You can use the <font> elements to override the <basefont> settings.

The <basefont> tag also takes color, size and face attributes and it will support relative font setting by giving size a value of +1 for a size larger or -2 for two sizes smaller.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Setting Basefont Color</title>
</head>
<body>
<basefont face="arial, verdana, sans-serif" size="2" color="#ff0000">
<p>This is the page's default font.</p>

<h2>Example of the &lt;basefont&gt; Element</h2>
<p><font size="+2" color="darkgray">
This is darkgray text with two sizes larger
</font></p>

<p><font face="courier" size="-1" color="#000000">
It is a courier font, a size smaller and black in color.
</font></p>

</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is the page's default font.

Example of the <basefont> Element

This is darkgray text with two sizes larger

It is a courier font, a size smaller and black in color.

HTML Marquees

An HTML marquee is a scrolling piece of text displayed either horizontally across or vertically down your webpage depending on the settings. This is created by using HTML <marquees> tag.

Note: The HTML <marquee> tag may not be supported by various browsers so its not recommended to rely on this tag, instead you can use Javascript and CSS to create such effects.

Syntax

A simple syntax to use HTML <marquee> tag is as follows:

<marquee attribute_name="attribute_value"....more attributes>

One or more lines or text message or image

</marquee>

The <marquee> Tag Attributes

Following is the list of important attributes which can be used with <marquee> tag.

Attribute	Description
width	This specifies the width of the marquee. This can be a value like 10 or 20% etc.
height	This specifies the height of the marquee. This can be a value like 10 or 20% etc.
direction	This specifies the direction in which marquee should scroll. This can be a value like up, down, left or right.
behavior	This specifies the type of scrolling of the marquee. This can have a value like scroll, slide and alternate.
scrolldelay	This specifies how long to delay between each jump. This will have a value like 10 etc.
scrollamount	This specifies the speed of marquee text. This can have a value like 10 etc.
loop	This specifies how many times to loop. The default value is INFINITE, which means that the marquee loops endlessly.
bgcolor	This specifies background color in terms of color name or color hex value.
hspace	This specifies horizontal space around the marquee. This can be a value like 10 or 20% etc.
vspace	This specifies vertical space around the marquee. This can be a value like 10 or 20% etc.

Below are few examples to demonstrate the usage of marquee tag.

Examples - 1

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML marquee Tag</title>
</head>
<body>
<marquee>This is basic example of marquee</marquee>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This is basic example of marquee

Examples - 2

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML marquee Tag</title>
</head>
<body>
<marquee width="50%">This example will take only 50% width</marquee>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This example will take only 50% width

Examples - 3

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML marquee Tag</title>
</head>
<body>
<marquee direction="right">This text will scroll from left to right</marquee>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This text will scroll from left to right

Examples - 4

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML marquee Tag</title>
</head>
<body>
<marquee direction="up">This text will scroll from bottom to up</marquee>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

This text will scroll from bottom to up

Web Development

HTML Overview

Basic HTML Document

HTML Tags

HTML Document Structure

The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration

HTML Basic Tags

Heading Tags

Example

Paragraph Tag

Example

Line Break Tag

Example

Centering Content

Example

Horizontal Lines

Example

Preserve Formatting

Example

Non-breaking Spaces

Example

HTML Elements

HTML Tag vs. Element

Nested HTML Elements

Example

This is italic heading

HTML Attributes

Example

Core Attributes

The id Attribute

EXAMPLE

The title Attribute

EXAMPLE

Titled Heading Tag Example

The class Attribute

The style Attribute

Internationalization Attributes

The dir Attribute

EXAMPLE

The lang Attribute

EXAMPLE

The xml:lang Attribute

Generic Attributes

HTML Formatting

Bold Text

Example

Italic Text

Example

Underlined Text

Example

Strike Text

Example

Monospaced Font

Example

Superscript Text

Example

Subscript Text

Example

Inserted Text

Example

Deleted Text

Example

Larger Text

Example

Smaller Text

Example

Grouping Content

Example

CONTENT ARTICLES

Example

HTML Phrase Tags

Emphasized Text

Example

Marked Text

Example

Strong Text

Example

Text Abbreviation

Example

Acronym Element