Comp 484

On this page you’ll find a quick reference to common HTML terms and a table of frequently used named character entities.

HTML Terms

Attribute

An HTML element property that provides additional information or functionality for an element. Attributes appear as a name/value pair with the value contained in quotation marks.

Block-Level Element

HTML tags that create blocks of content within the document such as headings and paragraphs. Block-level elements typically stack one on top of each other.

Child Element

Any HTML element contained inside another element. Child element tags must close before their parent element tags.

Closing Tag

Appears after an element’s content and indicates the end of an element. Identical to the opening tag but with a forward slash (/).

Comment

Reference information added to the code. May include overviews, reminders, or team communications.

CMS

Content Management System. Software that allows users to create and maintain content, e.g., Joomla! and WordPress.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets, a presentation language used to control the layout of web pages.

Doctype

Document Type Declaration. Appears at the top of all HTML documents to trigger standards mode and identify the HTML version.

DOM

Document Object Model, a representation of HTML documents as a tree of nodes, referenced by scripts like JavaScript.

Elements

Consist of an HTML tag and the content inside. Often confused with tags, but technically tags are just the markup.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. A common way to transfer files from one server to another.

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Governs formatting and transmission of HTML pages across the web.

Inline-Level Elements

Elements that flow within text, without starting a new line. Examples include <span> and <a>.

JavaScript

A scripting language developed by Netscape, widely used to add interactivity to web pages.

Metadata

Additional information about a document, typically stored in <meta> tags.

MIME Type

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension. Identifies the type of a file so browsers know how to handle it.

Parent Element

An element that contains other elements. Elements can be both parents and children.

Replaced Element

Elements whose content is replaced by external resources, like images or video.

Tag

Markup characters that indicate the type of content. Most tags have both opening and closing forms.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a document or resource on the web.

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium, the standards body that develops the HTML specification.

Common Named Character Entities