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HTML

Posted by Fedor Andreev
Fedor Andreev
6,438 Points

What is the difference between <!doctype html> and Index.html?

I never understood the difference. If you save the file in .html why bother declaring the document type?

3 Answers

Dino PaΕ‘kvan
Dino PaΕ‘kvan
Courses Plus Student 44,108 Points

There are different standards/types of HTML documents. The extension itself is not enough for layout engines to deduce which one is being used.

The doctype you mention is for HTML5.

You can find more about it here.

mrx3
mrx3
8,742 Points
mrx3
mrx3
8,742 Points

The doc type is stating what document type you will be using. Index.html is the name of your homepage on your site. The server will look for a page that is a homepage, so when the user is on your website, the index.html will be shown first to the user.

Jason Anello
PLUS
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 Points
Jason Anello
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 Points

One is a file name and the other is a doctype declaration that you put in the first line of your file so your browser knows how to process it.

There are different versions of html. The doctype you posted is the html5 doctype. Other index.html files might have an older doctype if they were using an older version of html.