HTML5 Foundations

chapter one

Getting Started with HTML5

So you’re eager to start building a website? By the end of this chapter, you will have done just that!

You start by getting your computer primed for building websites. That means you’re going to install a text editor and a lot of web browsers. I take you on a brief tour through some of the most popular text editors, web browsers, and developer tools so you can decide which ones you want to use.

Once you have your computer set up for building websites, you’ll learn about HTML elements and attributes. These are the basic building blocks that make up web pages.

There are a few things that all good web developers should know. That said, toward the end of this chapter, you will learn how to validate the HTML code that you have been writing. You will also learn that your websites can sometimes behave differently depending on which browser they are being viewed in.

What is HTML?

Hyper Text Markup Language, or HTML, is the basic code that makes up the foundation of every website on the World Wide Web. HTML is used for marking up text and other page content, and for defining how a web page is structured.

A web page is made up of lots of content—text, images, even videos. Each of these pieces of content is marked up using HTML syntax (a collection of words and symbols that can be understood by computer programs). HTML is also used to describe the structure of the page, defining each of the different sections it may have (such as a header, content ...