Lurking behind the images, videos, and articles on your favorite websites is a lot of code—specifically, HTML. If you have ever tried to read the code behind a website, you may have noticed it isn’t quite as pretty in that form.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss it. This code drives every website on the internet, a big part of which consists of HTML elements.
To make your website or blog, you need to understand HTML and its elements. Even if you don’t want to get into programming, it can be helpful to know the building blocks of the internet. Read on to learn more!
Introduction to HTML Elements
HTML elements are the building blocks of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). When a web page is written in HTML, it is divided into sections, each of which is a distinct element. Each element serves a different purpose and contains different content.
Common elements include headers, paragraphs, lists, images, videos, and web forms. Basic HTML elements can be combined to create complex web pages and applications. Elements can also be nested inside one another to create relationships between content and structure.
Different Types of HTML Elements
HTML elements can be categorized into different types based on their purpose and functionality. These types include:
Structural Elements
A structural element is a type of HTML element that determines the structure of a web page. They help in organizing the page, delineating content areas, and helping the page to render in different media. They allow developers to create informative and engaging pages with an organized structure.
Formatting Elements
Formatting elements are used to give a webpage a particular visual style, to help highlight particular content. They can make the document easier to read. Formatting elements come with a lot of options and allow unifying, spacing, styling, resizing, and customization of web pages, making them more attractive and usable.
For example, bold tags can indicate that some text should appear larger than other text on the page. Italic tags can indicate text should appear slanted, and headings can be used to divide a page into sections.
Interactive Elements
Interactive elements are HTML elements that allow users to interact with a page. This includes items like form elements such as text boxes, checkboxes, and radio buttons. There are also interactive elements such as hyperlinks and mouse-responsive elements like popups and tool tips.
Media Elements
Media elements make up a subset of HTML elements which refer to objects that can represent audio and video data. Media element tags are always embedded in a player program. It is these players that allow HTML-based webpages to render audio and video content on the user’s browser.
You can also convert an image to a web-friendly file to use on your website. To do so, convert to SVG. Through this file, you can freely resize your images without losing their quality.
Validation Elements
Validation elements are HTML elements that give validation capabilities to the user. They are used to check for errors and prevent invalid data from being entered into the HTML document. Validation elements include elements like error messages, submit buttons and date pickers that give feedback to the user.
Getting to Know HTML Elements
HTML elements give structure to webpages. Everything from text and images to links and forms is illustrated in HTML elements. It’s an essential tool for web developers to use to create informative and visually appealing websites.
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