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HTML How to Make a Website HTML First Build Structure

Masae Okada
Masae Okada
5,742 Points

the difference between <!DOCTYPE html> and <html></html>

if the <!DOCTYPE html> tells the browser "This is HTML document", why do I have to write <html></html> tag?

What is the purpose to write <html> tag after writing <!DOCTYPE>?

Thanks for helping me ahead ;)

3 Answers

Pavle Lucic
Pavle Lucic
10,801 Points

<!DOCTYPE html> - It is a DECLARATION . It tells browsers what version of HTML are you using, which helps them to properly render the elements on webpage.

HTML tag have three functions:

  1. it tells the browser that this is an HTML document
  2. represents the root of an HTML document
  3. it is the container for all other HTML elements (except for the <!DOCTYPE> tag).

The !DOCTYPE html tag defines the TYPE of document as HTML.

After the browser understands the TYPE of document is HTML, we may now define the HTML document itself by the code we create between the html/html tags.

Or, to say it in a different way:

!DOCTYPE html

-a web-document consisting of HTML pages.

HTML headbodyfooter /HTML

-an HTML page consisting of a header, body, and footer.

Johnatan Guzman
PLUS
Johnatan Guzman
Courses Plus Student 2,360 Points

With !doctype the browser knows that the document is html5 which is much easier than to declare a previous version of html which was something about !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">. So !doctype declares the version of the html (or which version the browser can expect).