HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Quiz
1.
What does HTML stand for? How about XHTML?
2.
What's the primary function of HTML?
3.
Why doesn't HTML control the layout of a page?
4.
What's the basic structure of an HTML tag?
Quiz Answers
1.
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. XHTML stands for Extensible
Hypertext Markup Language.
2.
HTML enables you to describe the structure of a document so that it can be styled,
either using HTML tags or using CSS.
3.
HTML doesn't control the layout of a page, because it's designed to be cross-
platform. It takes the differences of many platforms into account and allows all
browsers and all computer systems to be on equal ground.
4.
Most HTML elements consist of opening and closing tags, and they surround the
text that they affect. The tags are enclosed in brackets (
<>
). The beginning tag turns
on a feature, and the ending tag, which is preceded by a forward slash (
/
), turns
it off.
3
Exercises
1.
Before you actually start writing a meatier HTML page, getting a feel for what an
HTML page looks like certainly helps. Luckily, you can find plenty of source
material to look at. Every page that comes over the wire to your browser is in
HTML (or perhaps XHTML) format. (You almost never see the codes in your
browser; all you see is the final result.)
Most web browsers have a way of letting you see the HTML source of a web page.
If you're using Internet Explorer, for example, navigate to the web page that you
want to look at. Choose View, Source to display the source code in a text window.
In Firefox, choose View, Page Source.
Try going to a typical home page and then viewing its source. For example, Figure
3.3 shows the home page for Craigslist, a free online classified ads service search
page at
http://www.craisglist.org/.
