Creating Web Sites: The Missing Manual

Appendix A. HTML Quick Reference

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language of the Web. It’s the standard used to create all Web pages, 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 techniques.

This appendix provides a quick HTML reference, organized alphabetically. Each entry features a brief description of what the tag does, and many provide cross-references to more detailed examples in other chapters. You’ll also get a quick refresher of HTML character entities (codes that you use when you want to display special characters on a Web page).

Note

This appendix tackles HTML. HTML is slowly but surely giving ground to XHTML, which borrows the same basic set of tags, but has stricter rules about using them. To learn more about XHTML, see Section 2.4.

HTML Tags

As you already know, the essential idea behind the HTML standard is tags—specialized codes in angle brackets that tell the browser how to format text, when to insert images, and how to link different documents together. Throughout this book, you’ve examined just about every important HTML tag that’s in use today. Now you’re ready for a quick reference that can refresh your memory and help you find the information you need elsewhere in this book.

Note

You won’t see every HTML tag in this chapter. Some are old, obscure, and rarely used, while others are redundant or have been superseded by the ...