How do we keep all of our HTML in the right places? By making sure we build the structure correctly from the very first line. Let's construct an entire HTML document to practice putting the necessary elements where they belong.
- Add an appropriate
doctypetag at the top of an HTML file - Enclose the HTML contents of a site inside
htmltags - Structure an HTML document with
headandbodytags - Add
titletags to give the page a title that will show up in the browser tab
Every HTML document requires a few specific tags that enable your browser to correctly interpret and display the content. A good way to think about this is that we need to build a solid structure for the content we want to put in our page, and each tag has a function in building that structure. If we forget a tag, our structure will weaken and the browser might not be able to display our page at all. So it's important we put every piece in its place at the beginning.
To get started, open index.html in your text editor.
The first step is always to add a doctype declaration at the top of the file indicating to the browser how the HTML should be handled, and, in particular, what mode of HTML the page should be in. In modern web development, we can simply put html within the doctype declaration:
<!DOCTYPE html>Task #1 Put the doctype declaration at the top of your index.html file.
Secondly, we need to define where the HTML content is on the page by creating
opening and closing html tags to enclose all of your page's HTML content.
Task #2 Create opening and closing html tags underneath your doctype declaration.
Within the html tags, there are two main sections that are required: head
and body.
The head section generally contains data intended for the web browser,
including information about the page that is useful to search engines. It also
contains the title, which will show up at the top of a browser window,
typically in the tab. As the web developer, you get to decide what the title will be—whatever text you type in between the title tags will show up as the page title.
The body section contains all the content our users will see and interact with on the page.
Task #3 Add opening and closing head and body tags inside of the outer
html tags.
You can run the tests for this lab via learn. Make sure you save the file before running this command. Failing tests will provide helpful error messages that you can use to debug your code — read them closely for hints!
While working through these assignments, your general workflow should center on
writing code in the text editor and periodically running learn in the
terminal to check your work.
Another great way to track your progress is to open up the HTML document in your browser and watch how each change you make in the text editor affects the visual layout in the browser. For reference, here's a guide to viewing HTML pages in the Learn IDE.
Once you have the HTML document open in your browser, you can make changes to it in the text editor, save the file, refresh the page in the browser, and see the changes instantly.
We've figured out how to construct a solid structure for the HTML document. Now, as you pick up new HTML tags, you'll be able to add more elements to build out the rest of the page.