CSE 134B Web Client Languages
  1. Structure
  2. HTML

Structure · a series in nine lessons

HTML

HTML is "the Latin of the web": the language everything else on the platform is built from, and worth learning precisely. These lessons treat it as what it is, a language with a grammar, a parser and a runtime tree, and teach the vocabulary you choose from every time you write a page.

The lessons

Principles
  1. 01HTML as a language

    What markup is, where HTML came from, the bargain between a strict author and a forgiving parser, and the tree that actually runs.

  2. 02The document

    The skeleton, the doctype and rendering modes, character encoding, and what the parser inserts for you.

  3. 03Elements, attributes and entities

    Syntax as a contract: void elements, the attribute type system, character references and comments.

  4. 04Content models and validity

    Well-formed versus valid, content categories as a type system, and the validator as your compiler.

Semantics
  1. 05Landmarks and sectioning

    The elements that give a page its regions, and the cure for <div>-itis.

  2. 06Headings, text and lists

    The heading outline, text-level meaning, and the three kinds of list.

  3. 07Tables

    Tables for tabular data, marked up so every reader can follow them.

Metadata
  1. 08The head and the machine-readable layer

    Title, meta, link, and the structured data search engines and AI agents read.

  2. 09Extending HTML

    data-* attributes, custom elements, and using the platform before writing code.