HTML Tags and Elements: A Beginner's Guide

Welcome to the exciting world of web development! This blog post will guide you through the fundamental building blocks of any webpage: HTML tags and elements.

What are HTML Tags and Elements?

Imagine building a house. You need blueprints, right? In the world of web pages, HTML (HyperText Markup Language) provides those blueprints.

Tags: Think of tags as the keywords that tell the browser how to display the content. They are enclosed within angle brackets (e.g., <p>, <h1>, <img>).
Elements: An element consists of a starting tag, content, and an ending tag. For example:

HTML
```
  <h1>This is a heading</h1>
```
In this example:
<h1> is the starting tag.
"This is a heading" is the content.
</h1> is the ending tag.

Key HTML Tags and Their Uses

Let's explore some common HTML tags:

<p> (Paragraph): Defines a paragraph of text.
<h1> to <h6> (Headings): Defines different levels of headings, with <h1> being the largest and <h6> the smallest.
<br> (Line Break): Inserts a line break within a text.
<img> (Image): Inserts an image into the page.
<a> (Anchor): Creates a hyperlink to another webpage or a specific section within the same page.
<ul> (Unordered List) and <ol> (Ordered List): Creates lists of items.
<li> (List Item): Defines an item within a list.
<div> (Division): A general-purpose container for grouping and styling elements.
<span> (Span): A general-purpose inline container for grouping and styling inline elements.

Let's Build a Simple Page

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <title>My First Web Page</title>
</head>
<body>

  <h1>Welcome to My Page</h1>
  <p>This is a paragraph of text.</p>

</body>
</html>

<!DOCTYPE html>: Tells the browser it's an HTML5 document.
<html>: The root element of the page.
<head>: Contains meta-information about the page (like the title).
<body>: Contains the visible content of the page.

Getting Started

Text Editor: Use a text editor like VS Code.
Save the File: Save the code as an HTML file (e.g., index.html).
Open in Browser: Open the file in any web browser to see the result.

Here are some more common HTML tags:

For Text Formatting:

<strong>: Makes the enclosed text bold.
<em>: Makes the enclosed text italic.
<u>: Underlines the enclosed text.
<s>: Strikes through the enclosed text.
<del>: Indicates deleted text.
<ins>: Indicates inserted text.
<code></code>: Displays code samples.
<pre>: Preserves whitespace and formatting within the enclosed text.

For Semantic Structure:

<header>: Defines the header section of a page or section.
<nav>: Defines a section with navigation links.
<main>: Defines the main content of a document.
<aside>: Defines content aside from the page content (e.g., sidebar).
<section>: Defines a section within a document.
<article>: Defines an independent, self-contained content (e.g., a blog post).
<footer>: Defines a footer for a document or section.

For Tables:

<table>: Defines a table.
<tr>: Defines a table row.
<th>: Defines a table header cell.
<td>: Defines a table data cell.

For Forms:

<form>: Defines an HTML form for user input.
<input>: Creates different types of input elements (text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, etc.).
<textarea>: Creates a multi-line text input control.
<select>: Creates a dropdown list.
<option>: Defines an option within a select element.
<button>: Creates a clickable button.
<label>: Associates a label with a form control.

For Multimedia:

<audio>: Inserts audio content.
<video>: Inserts video content.
<caption>: Defines a caption for a table.

A Beginner's Guide to HTML Tags and Elements

What are HTML Tags and Elements?

Key HTML Tags and Their Uses

Let's Build a Simple Page

Here are some more common HTML tags: