Quick Reference Guide to Hypertext Markup Language I: Document Structure Elements "html" container standard These tags constitute the outermost shell of your document and indicate that everything within them is to be interpreted as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). These tags should be the first and last in your markup. * This container anticipates a time when Web pages are written in other languages besides HTML. head container standard These tags define the head of your document, which is a division separate from and preceding the main part, or body (see below). The head of the document primarily holds information used by browsers and other programs such as automated index builders (see next item). * Head and body are serial constructions: the head container must be closed before the body container begins. title container standard The container must go inside the head portion of your document. Browsers generally put the title contents in the "title bar" above the main document window. Most also compile a list of pages visited using title to designate the pages. * Indexing programs often use what is in this container to categorize Web documents. Always include a title; try to write useful ones -- and don't use the same title for multiple pages. meta tag netscape html-3 Like , the <meta> tag goes within the head part of your document; though this one is a solitary tag, not a container. The <meta> tag provides a hook on which to hang certain extensions to HTML, for example "dynamic documents" (see next item). * For more information about the <meta> tag, see Wilson's Design Guide or the Netscape Web site. http-equiv= [expression] http-equiv attribute netscape html-3 This is one of several attributes that can be added to the <meta> tag in Netscape's controversial implementation of HTML-3. This attribute lets your Web page send a message back to its server as if it had come from the browser. And yes, that does mean that pages can cause things to happen independent of user response, e.g., automatically activating links... * Such automatic movement, called "client pull," provides a crude way to create dynamic documents. Much more subtle things can be done with Common Gateway Interface scripts and Java. See the Netscape Web site for more details. <body></body> body container standard This container brackets the main presentational part of your page. The </body> tag is almost always the next-to-last in a Web markup. Like the head container, the body container has a few interesting, non-standard extensions, some of which are discussed in the section on Graphic Elements. * At the moment most browsers will forgive you if you forget </body> or </html> -- but this may not always be the case; don't leave open containers lying around.  comment tag standard This tag allows you to insert non-executable lines into your markup. Programmers use such comments to make complex instructions more readable for co-workers (and themselves). Good comments are a blessing. * Note that this is a solitary tag, not a container:the comment goes inside a single set of angle brackets.