Basics of HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language:
- markup language: defines structure and presentation
- elements: wrap raw text and give the computer instructions on how to mark it up
- hypertext: text displayed on a computer that gives access to other text via “hyperlinks”
browsers need to know what language something is in order to read it:
- this is done with the DOCTYPE declaration:
  - <!DOCTYPE html>
  - must be the first line of code in all HTML documents
  - to begin writing HTML after the DOCTYPE declaration, create an <html></html> tag to wrap everything
<head> (wrapped in HTML):
- contains the “metadata” for the page:
  - metadata is information that is kept hidden/not directly displayed
  - <title>:
    - specifies the title of the webpage
<body>:
- contains the content of the webpage
- includes everything displayed on the page
self-closing tags:
- a tag can be self-closing when it contains all the information necessary for the browser to render it within the tag itself:
  - e.g. a line break: <br />
  - can be used anywhere
hierarchy (parent-child relationships between elements):
- elements can be thought of in a hierarchy (tree) when they are nested within each other
Note: as code grows, it can be harder to keep track of how elements are related:
- whitespace - spacing text across lines of code. doesn’t get rendered, so it’s purely for the developer.
- indentaion - shows the hierarchy.
comments:
- 
- can be used to provide context for developers
- can be used to experiment with code (by “commenting it out”)
Review:
- Hyper Text Markup Language
- most elements have opening and closing tags
- self-closing tags cannot enclose text or other elements
- comments provide context or experimentation abilities
- elements can be nested and indentation can help make this clear
- <!DOCTYPE html> declaration comes first
- <html> element contains all HTML code