It takes discipline to use the content-based styles, since it is easier to simply think of how your text should look, not necessarily what it may also mean.
HTML: The Definitive Guide
O'Reilly; 3rd Edition
W3C.org's History Page
If you enjoy WebSite Primer please recommend this site to your friends!
HTML Markup: Tags & Elements Categories
Originally Published: 2001-03-19;
Revised: 2006
In a store one develops an idea of what to expect on certain aisles by the products sorted into categories. This also helped the employees define what should go where when stocking the shelves and, for shoppers, ease in getting what is needed or desired. On the Web, using this analogy, the shopper would be the browser. This article shares how HTML elements & tags have been categorized.
According to the O'Reilly publication, HTML: The Definitive Guide [3rd Edition], there are three main types of HTML content in a Web page:
- Elements & Tags
- The embedded markup used to define the Web documents contents.
- Comments
- Notations primarily for the Web page author when editing, revising, or whatever.
- Text
- The main bulk of what the Web page will be presenting.
Sea of HTML Markup
HTML offers over 100 elements or sets of tags, with the majority aimed at text, and this can feel overwhelming at first. Ed Tittel, author of The Hip Pocket Guide To HTML 3.2, said these markups could be further grouped, or divided, divided into 11 categories based on similarities, such as function, scope, or purposes.
Tittel explained categorizing helps the Web page author gain a better grasping of how and when to use the markups. Subsequently, a better understanding about other elements within that grouping and what, if any, particular limitations to consider or expect. For example: how certain attributes will work in one set but not in another or some tags not allowed in
or able to work with those from another category
This sounds more overwhelming than just learning HTML tags
I agree that it sounds complex but it is not as complicated as initially thought. Recall, the categories groupings are based on function and scope, or what those markups will do, and that helps to make the individual category's listing of elements self-explanatory.
- Document Structure: This is the skeleton or frame of an HTML document. These elements provide complete HTML designation and grid of the document's areas contained within it.
- Comments: Behind the scenes so these are optional elements as they are only visible if looking at the raw HTML document's file.
- Text Controls: This is the largest area of element selections therefore these elements can be further divided into categories:
- Headings: Allows providing of structure to a Web document's content through divide text contents into sections.
- Layout: Division and control the text's flow. Do not confuse the word control to mean dictating a document's flow as this groups is regarding use of content-based (logical) or physical markup.
- Lists: Methods to lay out items or elements for this purpose. These can be ordered, unordered, or a listing of definitions.
- Tables: Various markup for creating a table structure for some of the Web page's content.
- Forms: Elements related to forms.
- Links: There are two kinds of linking ability within the HTML document: hyperlinks and multimedia.
- Hyperlinks: Main allure of the Web; click of the mouse takes the person to a new page or site.
- Multimedia Links: Allows use other objects, for example sound, digital images, etc. which are separate from the HTML document itself, by giving browsers a reference of what to load and integrate in with the Web document's text contents.
- Frames: Elements to help HTML pages work with each other in a framed Web site layout.
- Style Sheets, JavaScript, and JAVA Applet Control: elements that help with the inclusion, controls, and alternatives.
That's it. See ... it wasn't all that scary after all, now was it?