Author: M Abo Bakar Aslam

Basic Structure and Run Code

The basic structure of an HTML document is fundamental to understanding how to create web pages.

Essential Components

Here’s a concise outline of the essential components of an HTML document. section contains the visible content that users will see when they visit your web page.

  1. <!DOCTYPE> Declaration:
    The <!DOCTYPE> declaration is the first line of an HTML document. It specifies the HTML version being used. For modern web development, you should use the HTML5 declaration: <!DOCTYPE html>

  2. <html> Element:
    The <html> element serves as the root element of the HTML document. All other elements are enclosed within it.

  3. <head> Element:
    Inside the <html> element, the <head> element contains metadata and information about the document. This includes the title of the page, character encoding, and links to external resources like stylesheets and scripts.

  4. <title> Element:
    Inside the <head> section, the <title> element defines the title of the web page, which appears in the browser’s title bar or tab.

  5. <body> Element:
    The <body> element contains the main content of the web page, including text, images, links, and other elements that are visible to the user.

Example 1:

Here’s a basic HTML template that puts these elements together.

<!--File: myHTMLFile.html-->
<!DOCTYPE html>
 
<html>
    <head>
        <title>My Web Page</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <!-- Your web page content goes here -->
        <h1>Welcome to My Web Page</h1>
        <p>This is a sample paragraph of text.</p>
        <a href="https://www.w3schools.com">Visit www.w3schools.com</a>
        <!-- Add more content as needed -->
        <div class="very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-log-div">long div</div>
    </body>
</html>

How to Run the Code

Do following steps in sequence.

  1. Open any text editor
  2. Paste above code
  3. Save the file by setting some name and with extension .html
  4. Open the file with any browser

Output

HTML Structure
Figure 1: Basic structure of an HTML document, by edu2skill