Structure of an HTML Document
HTML and XHTML documents consist of text, which defines
the content of the document, and tags, which define the structure and
appearance of the document. The structure of an HTML document is simple,
consisting of an outer <html>
tag enclosing the document:[*]
<html> <head> <title>Barebones HTML Document</title> </head> <body> This illustrates, in a very <i>simp</i>le way, the basic structure of an HTML document. </body> </html>
Most documents have a head
and a body, delimited by the
<head> and <body> tags. The head is where you give
your document a title and where you indicate other parameters the
browser may use when displaying the document. The body is where you put
the actual contents of the document. This includes the text for display
and document-control markers (tags) that advise the browser how to
display the text. Tags also reference special-effects files, including
graphics and sound, and indicate the hotspots (hyperlinks and anchors)
that link your document to other documents.
[*] The structure of an XHTML document is slightly more complicated, as we detail in Chapter 16.
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