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preservelog

Document structure

  • <!DOCTYPE html>
    • Purpose of the DOCTYPE declaration
    • Ensuring proper rendering in browsers
  • <html>, <head>, and <body> Tags
    • Structure and significance of the <html> tag
    • Using the <head> tag for metadata and links
    • Placing content within the <body> tag
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en-US">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
    <title>My test page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Hello World!</p>
  </body>
</html>

Explanation of <!DOCTYPE html>

Section titled “Explanation of <!DOCTYPE html>”
  • <!DOCTYPE html> — doctype. It is a required preamble. In the mists of time, when HTML was young (around 1991/92), doctypes were meant to act as links to a set of rules that the HTML page had to follow to be considered good HTML, which could mean automatic error checking and other useful things. However, these days, they don’t do much and are basically just needed to make sure your document behaves correctly. That’s all you need to know for now.

Structure of <html>, <head>, and <body> tags

Section titled “Structure of <html>, <head>, and <body> tags”

  • <html></html> — the  element. This element wraps all the content on the entire page and is sometimes known as the root element. It also includes the lang attribute, setting the primary language of the document.

  • <head></head> — the  element. This element acts as a container for all the stuff you want to include on the HTML page that isn’t the content you are showing to your page’s viewers. This includes things like and a page description that you want to appear in search results, CSS to style our content, character set declarations, and more.

  • <body></body> — the  element. This contains all the content that you want to show to web users when they visit your page, whether that’s text, images, videos, games, playable audio tracks, or whatever else.

  • <meta charset="utf-8"> — This element sets the character set your document should use to UTF-8 which includes most characters from the vast majority of written languages. Essentially, it can now handle any textual content you might put on it. There is no reason not to set this, and it can help avoid some problems later on.

  • <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"> — This viewport element ensures the page renders at the width of viewport, preventing mobile browsers from rendering pages wider than the viewport and then shrinking them down.

  • <title></title> — the  element. This sets the title of your page, which is the title that appears in the browser tab the page is loaded in. It is also used to describe the page when you bookmark/favorite it.