First Steps

Let's learn some HTML!

Quick facts:

• HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. Invented in the early 1990's, researchers were looking for a way plain-text documents to contain "hyperlinks," a new invention to replace footnotes. Hyperlinks allowed readers to simply click a word to have the relevant cross-referenced document loaded, rather than having old-style footnotes at the bottom of the page or chapter.

See w3schools.com for a comprehensive HTML reference.

• HTML has undergone many revisions since. We will be using HTML 5. Modern HTML provides a way to completely "mark up" a document's content to denote the start and end of headings, paragraphs, bullet lists, images, and more.

• Important terminology:

  • Element
  • Attribute
  • Opening Tag
  • Closing Tag
  • Content
  • Document
  • Head
  • Body