Appendix A. HTML Quick Reference

HTML is the language of the Web. You can use it to create any web page, whether you’re promoting a local bake sale or running a Fortune 500 company. Chapter 2 introduced HTML in detail, and since that point you’ve steadily added to your arsenal of HTML elements.

This appendix provides a quick reference of all the HTML elements you’ve seen in this book (and a few more). Each entry features a brief description of what the element does, and many entries provide cross-references to more detailed examples in the book. You’ll also get a preview of the most usable new elements in HTML5 (those that can be coaxed into working with Internet Explorer 8 and older), and a quick refresher of HTML character entities, which let you display special characters on a web page.

HTML Elements

As you already know, the essential idea behind the HTML standard is elements—specialized codes in angle brackets that tell a browser how to format text, when to insert images, and how to link different documents together. Throughout this book, you examined just about every important HTML element in use today, not including the so-new-they-break-your-browser goodies in HTML5.

The elements in this reference are arranged in alphabetical order. At the beginning of each section are two key details about the element:

  • Block or inline. You can put a block element directly in the <body> section of a web page. You can’t do that with an inline element; you need to put it inside another block element. ...

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