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Global Structure of an HTML Document
5:36Even though most web pages look different from one another, every web page follows a common HTML structure.
Even though most web pages look
different from one another,
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every web page follows a common structure.
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Each webpage you create should instruct
the browser the version of HTML you're
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using, provide general information about
the page like the title for example.
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And define where to display the visible
content of the page like images,
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text and links.
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You can code along with me by
clicking the Launch Workspace button
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next to the video.
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This will bring up the text editor we're
going to use to build our simple website
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using HTML.
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For now you should only see three
image files with a .jpg extension, and
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you'll learn more about these image files
later when we add images to our page.
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Before we write any code,
we'll need to create an HTML file.
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In the work space menu, click File, New
File, and we'll name the file index.html.
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A file ending in .html let's the browser
know that it's an HTML file,
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and index is the most common file name used
for the default or home page of a website.
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So now we're ready to start writing code.
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Every HTML page begins with a document
type or doc type declaration that informs
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the browser which version of HTML the page
is using, so it can render it correctly.
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So at the very top of the file,
type a left angle bracket followed by
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an !DOCTYPE space, then we'll type html,
followed by a right angle bracket.
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Now there used to be a lot of really
complicated document types, but
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the latest version for HTML5 is really
simple, it's just doc type html.
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Next below the doc type, we'll add
a set of opening and closing HTML tags.
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So first, type the opening tag with
a left angle bracket, then html, and
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a right angle bracket.
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Now every closing tag in HTML should
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include a forward slash
in front of the tag name.
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So the closing HTML tag should be /html.
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So these tags together describe the HTML
element which is usually the root or
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top level element of a webpage.
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And this tells the browser that everything
we add in between the opening and
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closing html tags is html code.
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So next inside the html element,
I'll indent two spaces by pressing
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the space bar twice,
then add two elements, head and body.
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When you place one element inside another,
it's called nesting.
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So the head and body here
are nested inside the html element.
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So to represent the fact that one
set of tags is inside another,
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it's a good idea to indent
the nested tags like I did here.
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The head element contains information
about the page like the page title,
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for example.
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And most of the information you add to
the head isn't visible in the browser.
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For instance,
you could add links to JavaScript and
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CSS files to add the behavior and
presentation layers, respectively.
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But for now,
we'll only worry about adding a title.
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So inside the head element, I'll nest
a title element by typing opening and
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closing title tags.
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And between the title tags,
I'll write the text Experience VR.
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Save the file and click the preview icon
on the top right corner of the workspace.
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And this opens the index.html file
in another browser window or tab.
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So you should see the text you
wrote between the title tags
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appear in the browser's title bar or
on the pages tab at the top of the window.
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Now below the head is the body,
which is where you include any content
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you want to display in the browser like
images, headings, paragraphs, and links.
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The body element is currently
an empty set of tags, so
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the browser is not
displaying anything yet.
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So let's quickly add content.
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Back inside the body element, indent two
spaces and write the text, Experience VR.
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Press Enter, and right below I'll type,
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A simple blog about virtual
reality experiences.
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Save the file and refresh the browser and
you'll see that even though
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we wrote this text on two separate lines,
the browser displays it on one line.
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You see, the browser doesn't know how we
want to display this text on the screen.
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So we need to add HTML tags or markup
to tell the browser how to display it.
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HTML is made up of many, many tags that
are used to give webpages structure,
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format text, and
more like you saw in the previous video.
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But you don't have to memorize all or
even most of the tags.
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You can use a resource like the MDN,
or Mozilla Developer Network,
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HTML reference to see a list of
all the available HTML elements.
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Whenever I feel stuck,
I visit this page and
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the elements are even grouped by function
to make it easier to find what you need.
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I posted the link to this
page in the teacher's notes.
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So why don't you check out MDN now to
review the HTML elements from this video.
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You could even get a head start
learning about the heading and
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paragraph elements, which we'll add
to the webpage in the next video.
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Remember, there should be only one html,
head, title, and body element in a page.
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And here's a tip.
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You don't have to retype the doc type and
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comment tags every time
you create a new webpage.
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Instead, you'll make a copy or
template of this code and
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use it to copy from and
paste them to a new webpage.
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In addition, many text editors can
quickly insert html snippets like
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a basic html template into your
html file using keyboard shortcuts.
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I've posted information about html
code snippets in the teacher's notes.
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