Websites & HTML

Reading news, watching videos, checking timetables: you open websites every day without thinking about how they come to be. Yet behind every single page sits the same simple idea. Once you understand it, you will see the web with completely different eyes.

Browser asks, server answers

When you type in an address, your browser sends a request to a server, a computer somewhere on the net that keeps websites ready. The server answers with a text file: the page's HTML. HTML describes the structure, for example headings, paragraphs, lists and links. It uses tags in angle brackets for that: a paragraph starts with <p> and ends with </p>, a big heading sits between <h1> and </h1>, a list entry between <li> and </li>, and a link between <a> and </a>. The short names are simply abbreviations: p for paragraph, h for heading, li for list item and a for anchor, the anchor a link hangs on.

From text to view

The browser reads the HTML and renders the finished view from it: it draws headings large, paragraphs as blocks of text, lists with bullets and links clickable. So on screen you normally do not see the HTML itself, but the picture the browser builds from it. That is exactly why the same page looks similar on a phone and a laptop: both browsers read the same blueprint.

Every page is made of this

Whether it is a giant shop or a small blog: every website you have ever visited is HTML in the end. Big pages simply have a lot more of it, plus styling with CSS and programs in JavaScript. But the basic skeleton is always the same, and you can look at it on any page.