HTML Elements and Attributes that Control the Gobal Structure of the Webpage

Guest Author - Diane Cipollo

Below is a list of the most commonly used^*** html element tags that control the global structure of the webpage.

Note: Some attributes listed below have been depreciated in favor of Cascading Style Sheets.

Element Tags That Control Global Structure
Element	Opening Tag	Attributes	Closing Tag	Description
body	<body> Optional	bgcolor="color" text="color" link="color" alink="color" vlink="color" background="url" marginheight="x" marginwidth="x" leftmargin="x" rightmargin="x" topmargin="x"	</body> Optional	Defines the content section Specifies background and text colors** bgcolor - background color text - text color link - link color alink - active link color vlink - visited link color The background attribute specifies the background image URL and name of image file. topmargin - height of top margin in pixels (IE) leftmargin - width of left margin in pixels (IE) rightmargin - width of right margin in pixels (IE) marginheight - height of margin (Netscape) marginwidth - width of margin (Netscape)
comment	<!-- ... -->		None	Defines a comment
div	<div>	class="?"	</div>	Defines a section of inline content class - attribute that is set to a class name referenced from a CSS
doctype	<!doctype> Optional		None	Identifies HTML specification
h	<h#>	align="position"	</h#>	Designates text as a heading # - Size 1 (smallest) through 7 (largest) align - set to left, center or right
head	<head> Optional		</head> Optional	Defines the head section
hr	<hr>	noshade width="x or %" align="position" size="x" color="color"	None	Creates a horizontal line across webpage noshade - removes 3D effect width - set to pixels or percent of webpage align - set to left, center or right size - set height in pixels color - color of line**
html	<html> Optional		</html> Optional	Defines the HTML document
meta	<meta>	name="?" content="?"	None	Supplies descriptive information about webpage name - defines type of meta tag content - info displayed by web browser
span	<span>	class="?"	</span>	Defines a section of block level content class - attribute that is set to a class name referenced from a CSS
title	<title>		</title>	Supplies the webpage title for the web browser

^***A complete list of html element tags can be found at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/index/elements.html
^**Color can be set using color names (red, black, etc) or RGB color codes or hexidecimal color codes.