HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the standard markup language used to create web pages. HTML works by providing the structure of a webpage with headings, paragraphs, links, images, and more.
HTML can be paired with CSS and JavaScript for styling and interactiveness, respectively.
Why HTML Is Important For Web Development
HTML is crucial when it comes to web development because every website starts with HTML, it is compatible across all devices and browsers, and using HTML properly will benefit SEO (search engine optimization) of web pages.
HTML Basic Structure
html<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <title>Introduction to HTML</title> </head> <body> <h1>Welcome to Your First HTML Page</h1> <p>This is a paragraph of text in HTML.</p> <a href="https://www.example.com">Visit Example</a> </body> </html>
<!DOCTYPE HTML>- Tells the browser that the document is written in HTML.
<html lang="en">- Root tag of the file and specifies that the language is English.
<head>- Element that contains the metadata of the file, which includes the title, character encoding, and viewport settings.
<meta charset="UTF-8">- Specifies the character encoding. UTF-8 supports practically all characters from all languages.
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">- Controls the viewport size and scale, ensuring that the web page is responsive.
<title>- Defines the title of the document.
<body>- Contains the content of the web page, including: text, images, links, and videos.
Conclusion
HTML is the framework of the web, and learning it is your first step at becoming a great web developer. Knowing how to use HTML efficiently will allow you to create well-structured web pages and boost the SEO of your web applications. We will go more in depth on HTML throughout this guide. Check out how to set up and run a live HTML server here.