HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
1
CHAPTER
Traditional HTML and XHTML
Markup languages are ubiquitous in everyday computing. Although you may not
realize it, word processing documents are filled with markup directives indicating
the structure and often presentation of the document. In the case of traditional
word processing documents, these structural and presentational markup codes are more
often than not behind the scenes. However, in the case of Web documents, markup in the form
of traditional Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and its Extensible Markup Language
(XML)-focused variant, XHTML, is a little more obvious. These not-so-behind-the-scenes
markup languages are used to inform Web browsers about page structure and, some might
argue, presentation as well.
First Look at HTML and XHTML
In the case of HTML, markup instructions found within a Web page relay the structure of
the document to the browser software. For example, if you want to emphasize a portion of
text, you enclose it within the tags
<em>
and
</em>
, as shown here:
<em>
This is important text!
</em>
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