Example Explained
- The DOCTYPE declaration defines the document type
- The text between <html> and </html> describes the web page
- The text between <body> and </body> is the visible page content
- The text between <h1> and </h1> is displayed as a heading
- The text between <p> and </p> is displayed as a paragraph
HTML Elements
"HTML tags" and "HTML elements" are often used to describe the same thing.
But strictly speaking, an HTML element is everything between the start tag and the end tag, including the tags:
HTML Element:
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
HTML Page Structure
Below is a visualization of an HTML page structure:
<html>
<body>
</html>
<h1>This a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>
</body>HTML Versions
Since the early days of the web, there have been many versions of HTML:
| Version | Year |
|---|---|
| HTML | 1991 |
| HTML+ | 1993 |
| HTML 2.0 | 1995 |
| HTML 3.2 | 1997 |
| HTML 4.01 | 1999 |
| XHTML 1.0 | 2000 |
| HTML5 | 2012 |
| XHTML5 | 2013 |
The <!DOCTYPE> Declaration
The <!DOCTYPE> declaration helps the browser to display a web page correctly.
There are many different documents on the web, and a browser can only display an HTML page 100% correctly if it knows the HTML type and version used.
Common Declarations
HTML5
<!DOCTYPE html>
HTML 4.01
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
XHTML 1.0
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
For a complete list of document type declarations, go to our DOCTYPE Reference.
