HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites

1

STRUCTURE

• Understanding structure
• Learning about markup
• Tags and elements

We come across all kinds of documents every day of our lives. Newspapers, insurance forms, shop catalogues… the list goes on.

Many web pages act like electronic versions of these documents. For example, newspapers show the same stories in print as they do on websites; you can apply for insurance over the web; and stores have online catalogs and e-commerce facilities.

In all kinds of documents, structure is very important in helping readers to understand the messages you are trying to convey and to navigate around the document. So, in order to learn how to write web pages, it is very important to understand how to structure documents. In this chapter you will:

• See how HTML describes the structure of a web page
• Learn how tags or elements are added to your document
• Write your first web page

HOW PAGES USE STRUCTURE

Think about the stories you read in a newspaper: for each story, there will be a headline, some text, and possibly some images. If the article is a long piece, there may be subheadings that split the story into separate sections or quotes from those involved. Structure helps readers understand the stories in the newspaper.

The structure is very similar when a news story is viewed online (although it may also feature audio or video). This is illustrated on the right with a copy of a newspaper alongside ...