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HTML 4 Bible, 2nd Edition 8

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the rule-making body that maintains standards for HTML, CSS, XML and other web technologies. The W3C is composed of over 400 member companies and tries to balance their interests. It puts specifications in writing through committees and ensures browsers and servers can communicate through a standard. Elements in HTML have three parts - a start tag, content, and an end tag. The browser interprets the text based on the start and end tags and elements can be nested within each other.

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41 views1 page

HTML 4 Bible, 2nd Edition 8

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the rule-making body that maintains standards for HTML, CSS, XML and other web technologies. The W3C is composed of over 400 member companies and tries to balance their interests. It puts specifications in writing through committees and ensures browsers and servers can communicate through a standard. Elements in HTML have three parts - a start tag, content, and an end tag. The browser interprets the text based on the start and end tags and elements can be nested within each other.

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visanu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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4 Part I ✦ HTML 4 Quick Start

Who makes the rules?


Every organization has its own rule-making body. In the case of the Web, the rule-making
body is the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is composed of representatives
from over 400 member companies who want to have a say in the standards. The W3C tries
to balance the interests of the academy, the companies producing the Web browsers
(notably Netscape and Microsoft), and the technology. The W3C pulls together committees
with representatives from interested members and puts the specifications in writing for
HTML, CSS, XML, and other essential technologies. If the W3C weren’t maintaining a stan-
dard, all browsers might eventually be unable to talk to all Web servers. You can visit their
Web site at http://www.w3c.org.

Elements versus tags


The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) uses the word elements in two ways, which
is rather confusing. You may have noticed this book does the same thing. In this
chapter, we discuss elements in the tag sense of the word. The other kind of element
is the element of structure of a document (for example, title, paragraph, blockquote).

Even elements have parts


Unlike the elements in the Periodic Table, elements in HTML usually have three
parts: start tags, content, and end tags. Most elements have start tags and end tags.
The start tag is the element name surrounded by angle brackets: <HEAD>, <BODY>,
<P>, <BLOCKQUOTE>, and <UL>. The end tag is the element name, preceded by a /
(called a forward slash), surrounded by angle brackets: </HEAD>, </BODY>, </P>,
</BLOCKQUOTE>, and </UL>.

When the browser sees a start tag, it knows the text to come will all be of the type
defined by the start tag. Not until the browser sees an end tag does it stop expect-
ing the text to be of that type. Because elements can often be nested — not all
elements can be nested within all other elements, but there are valid element nest-
ings — it doesn’t automatically assume a different start tag indicates the previous
element type has ended. In fact, the browser assumes nothing. Forget about the
benefit of the doubt. The browser takes everything you send it absolutely literally.

Note To add another layer of confusion, some elements will display correctly without
their end tag, as long as the end of an element can be clearly determined from
other surrounding elements. For example, the LI (list item) and P (paragraph) tag
don’t require end tags, since their end can be clearly determined by the beginning
of the next element. Still, you won’t go wrong by always including end tags.

Definition Nesting. Placing elements within other elements. For example, in a table, the
rows are nested within the table element, and the cells are nested within the row
elements.

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