HTML glossary terms
Table of Contents
A
ALT TEXT
Text description of a graphic that appears before the graphic is loaded into the browser. After an image has been downloaded on the browser, the alt text may briefly appear over the graphic as you roll over the mouse over the graphic.
ANGLE BRACKETS
Less than (<) and greater than (>) symbols used to surround an element to create a tag.
ATTRIBUTE
A property of an HTML element used to provide additional instructions to a given HTML tag. The attribute is specified at the start of HTML tag.
ATTRIBUTE (CLASS)
HTML elements can have one or more classes, separated by spaces. You can style elements using CSS by selecting them with their classes.
ATTRIBUTE (ID)
HTML elements can have only one id attribute to identify it. Id elements should always be unique to that single element, and each element should never have more than one id.
ATTRIBUTE (HREF)
Links tell the browser where to go using an href attribute, which stores a URL.
B
BASIC FORMATTING
Text can be formatted to be bold, italic, or underlined using simple formatting tags.
BODY
The body is the container for all of a page’s content. Comes after the <head> tag, within the overall <html> tag.
BROKEN LINKS
Broken links are those links that do not work because the destination has been deleted or the path has been changed.
BROWSER
A program used to access and display HTML documents. Common examples: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
C
CGI
An abbreviation for ‘Common Gateway Interface’, a programming standard that defines how programs communicate with each other and with the webserver. Generally, a CGI-complaint program is called a script.
CHILDREN
An element that is an immediate descendent of another element or nested within another element is called a child. These become useful when using CSS child selectors and pseudo-elements.
CLICKABLE MAP
Another name for an imagemap.
COMMENTS
HTML comments are sometimes used in code to explain parts of the markup. They are similar to comments in other languages. Users do not see comments in their browsers.
D
DEPRECATED ELEMENT
An element that will be obsolete in the future is referred to as deprecated. The element can be used today, however, it needs to be removed sometime in the future to avoid a situation where newer browsers would ignore that element.
DIV
A block-level container, or ‘division’ of the web page, for content with no semantic meaning.
DOCUMENT CONTENT
Parts, such as text and graphics, of a web document that you want the user to see.
DTD
An abbreviation for ‘Document Type Definition’, a specification for a mark-up language.
E
ELEMENTS
An element in HTML refers to a tag, such as <head>, <body>, and <p>, or element of the structure of a document, such as body, title, and paragraph.
ENTITIES
Entities are those characters that do not appear on the keyboard, such as ™ ©, ®, and so on, or characters that have special meaning in HTML, such as <, >, &, and so on.
F
FORM
A mechanism that enables a user to supply input to the web page author.
FOOTER TEXT
The text that is not specifically related to the content of the webpage and that appears on every webpage is referred to as footer text. The most notable example of footer text is the copyright statements at the bottom of web pages.
FRAMES
Frames document type definition indicates that the document uses frames and it also supports deprecated elements. This is the most flexible document type definition.
FTP
An abbreviation for ‘File Transfer Protocol’, is a robust method for transferring files between computers using TCP/IP. TCP is an abbreviation for ‘Transmission Control Protocol’ and IP is an abbreviation for ‘Internet Protocol’. TCP is responsible for transporting data and IP is responsible for making sure data goes to the correct address.
G
GIF
An abbreviation for ‘Graphics Interchange Format’, A file format (commonly used for web pages) used for storing image files.
H
HEAD
Tag that surrounds important content that is invisible to the user, but is important to the browser. Elements within this tag contain metadata about the page and links to stylesheets, scripts, and so on.
HEADINGS
Tags such as <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6> allow you to use six levels of document headings, ranging from largest to smallest, breaking up the document into logical sections.
HORIZONTAL RULES
This tag creates a black line one pixel thick that runs all the way across its container. It can be styled to look differently with CSS.
HOTSPOT
A defined area on an image acts as a hyperlink.
HTML
An abbreviation for ‘Hypertext Markup Language’, a web scripting language used for creating web page documents.
HTML CONVERTER
A software that converts text to HTML code.
HTML EDITOR
A software that inserts HTML code as you work to create an HTML file.
HYPERLINKS
Hyperlinks, or just links, take the user to another webpage when they click on it. The most common attribute used with links is href, which tells the browser where the link goes.
HYPERMEDIA
Hypertext that may include multimedia like text, images, sound, and video.
I
IMAGES
The img tag embeds an image into your HTML. Always found with the ‘src’ attribute, which tells the browser where to find the image. Note that the <img/> tag is self-closing.
IMAGEMAP
A graphic that has clickable areas (or hotspots) defined to allow a user to move to another URL.
INLINE
Elements that are supported directly by HTML are known as inline. Also, another characteristic of inline element is that their output can be seen or heard without the user taking any additional action, such as clicking, and installing of a plug-in, because the output is directly placed on the webpage. Inline elements include, for instance, animated graphics, graphics, and sound.
J
JPEG/JPG
An abbreviation for ‘Joint Photographic Experts Group’, A common cross-platform image format that is used on the web.
L
LINE BREAKS
This tag is used in a block of text to force a line break. This is to be used for things that are a single paragraph, but where this formatting is necessary such as poems or addresses. To separate paragraphs, separate each paragraph into a separate element instead.
LINKS
Link elements are used to connect your document to a related resource, very different from hyperlinks, which take you to another webpage when you click on them. Links appear only in the head section of a document so they do not alter the content, but only the presentation. Links are most commonly used to connect to a stylesheet, script, favicon, or alternate format of the page such as an RSS feed or PDF.
LISTS
HTML supports two kinds of lists: ordered lists and unordered lists. Within lists, each individual list item has its own tag.
LISTS (UNORDERED LISTS)
Unordered lists are just lists whose items are denoted with bullet points.
LISTS (ORDERED LISTS)
Ordered lists’ items are denoted with numbers.
M
MIRROR SITE
A mirror site is a copy of a publicly available website.
N
NESTING/NESTED TAGS
Nesting occurs when you place tags within other tags. Anytime you create an HTML document, you will end up using nested tags. For example, the <title>, and <body>, tags are nested inside the root <html> tag. The <body> tag is likely to also nest inside of itself other tags.
NAVIGATING
The act of observing the content of the web for some purpose.
O
OBSOLETED ELEMENT
An element that won't necessarily work in the future versions of browsers. Any obsolete element that you may be using in your website should be removed; otherwise, newer browsers would ignore that element.
OUT-OF-LINE
Refers to those elements that require the user to take some additional action to see or hear the output of the element. The additional action could consist of clicking or installing a plug-in. Examples of out-of-line elements include video, 3-D models, animations, and so on.
P
PARAGRAPHS
One of the most common tags in HTML, this denotes a paragraph of text. It often has other elements nested inside of it, such as <img/>, <a>, <strong> and <em>.
PIXEL
A collection of dots that make up a monitor's display. On colour monitors, a pixel contains three dots: red, green, and blue. On monochrome monitors, a pixel contains only one dot.
R
ROBOT
A software that automatically explores the web.
S
SEMANTIC FORMATTING
These tags are similar to the previously mentioned formatting tags which have fallen out of favour. The difference is that these tags have semantic value (meaning). <em> is used for something that you wish to emphasize and <strong> is used for something that is important. With both of these elements, you can convey the level of emphasis or importance of nesting. The more times that you nest the element within itself, the higher the magnitude of the text it contains.
SERVER
A software application that serves requests initiated by client programs.
STRICT
The strict version indicates that the web document does not use frames or any deprecated elements. If a web document is based on a strict definition, it must have clean HTML, meaning all opened tags must be closed, attribute values surrounded by double quotation marks, and so on.
STYLE SHEET
A style sheet includes styling syntax, rules, that dictates how your web page will look. Style sheets are very useful as they help web developers create a uniform, or consistent, presentation of web pages.
SYNTAX
Syntax basically refers to the rules a computer language uses to perform a task. Without syntax, a computer language would not be functional or useful at all. HTML syntax dictates what and how a web page will display.
SYNTAX ERROR
A syntax error basically refers to a situation in which the rules, or a rule, of the computer language are, is, broken. In HTML, depending on the syntax error you produce, the web page may look completely different than what you had intended.
T
TABLES
An element for displaying information in rows and columns. Supports headers and footers for labelling columns. Divides information into rows, denoted by the tr tag, that contain cells, denoted by the td tag.
TAGS
The HTML code that controls the appearance of an HTML document's content.
TAGS (OPENING)
An HTML instruction that tells the browser to turn on the feature and apply it to the document content that follows.
TAGS (CLOSING)
An HTML instruction that tells the browser to turn off a specific feature of an opening tag.
TITLE
This tag tells the browser what to display as the page title at the top and tells search engines what the title of your site is. It goes inside <head> tags. Try and make your page titles descriptive, but not overly verbose.
TRANSITIONAL
A document defined as transitional may include deprecated elements and all the new HTML elements. However, the document cannot contain frames.
U
UPLOADING
The opposite of downloading. While uploading simply means moving/sending files to the server, downloading means getting/receiving files from the server.
W
W3C
An abbreviation for ‘World Wide Web Consortium’, an organization consisting of representatives from member companies and responsible for making rules for the World Wide Web.
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