For example, the HTML heading elements ( through ) are block-level elements that automatically place their content onto a new line and push any content that follows onto a new line. Each of these six heading elements represent a different heading size.
Let’s study how this works in practice. At the bottom of your index.html file, try pasting in the highlighted code snippet:
strong>My strong textstrong> br> em>My emphasized textem> h1>Heading 1h1> h2>Heading 2h2> h3>Heading 3h3> h4>Heading 4h4> h5>Heading 5h5> h6>Heading 6h6> Save your file and reload it in the browser. You should receive something like this:
Let’s now inspect the block-level heading elements to study how they differ from the inline-level text elements above. Open up the Firefox Web Developer Inspector and hover over each of the elements to inspect their occupied space as indicated by the blue highlighting. You should be able to confirm that the occupied horizontal space of each of the inline-level elements is determined by its text content, while the occupied horizontal space of each of the block-level elements stretches across the entire web page:
Block-level elements will always push inline-level elements down to the next line, even if you write those HTML elements on the same line of the HTML document. To confirm this for yourself, try writing a block-level element and an inline-level element on the same line of your index.html file. Erase the existing content from your file and add the following code snippet:
strong>My strong textstrong>h1>My headingh1>em>My emphasized texta> Can you guess how this HTML code will render in the browser? Save your file and reload it in the browser. You should receive something like this:
Notice that the heading element has started on a new line and pushed the subsequent text element to a new line even though the elements were written on the same line in the HTML document.
You should now have an understanding of how inline-level and block-level elements are positioned and how they affect the position of nearby elements. Remembering their distinct behaviors can be useful when arranging HTML elements in the future.
We’ll continue learning about new inline and block elements in the tutorials ahead.
- How To Nest HTML Elements
- Nesting Best Practices
- How To Use HTML Attributes
- Using the Style Attribute
- This text is 40 pixels and green.
- How TO — Build a Website
- Create a Website with a CSS Framework
- A «Layout Draft»
- Navigation bar
- The Band
- Article
- Article
- Article
- Footer
- Doctype, Meta Tags, and CSS
- Creating Page Content
- Semantic Elements
- The Navigation Bar
- Slide Show
- Sections and Articles
- Footer
// Tutorial //
How To Nest HTML Elements
This tutorial will teach you how to nest HTML elements in order to apply multiple HTML tags to a single piece of content.
HTML elements can be nested, meaning that one element can be placed inside another element. Nesting allows you to apply multiple HTML tags to a single piece of content. For example, try pasting the following code snippet inside your index.html file:
strong>My bold text and em>my bold and emphasized textem>strong> Save your file and reload it in the browser. (For instructions on creating an index.html file, please see our tutorial here or for loading the file in your browser, see our tutorial here.) You should receive something like this:
My bold text and my bold and emphasized text
Nesting Best Practices
Note that it is recommended to always close nested tags in the reverse order that they were opened.
For example, in the example below, the tag closes first as it was the last tag to open. The tag closes last as it was the first to open.
This sentence contains HTML elements that are strong>em>nested according to best practicesem>strong>. As a counter example, the following HTML code contains tags that are not nested according to best practices, as the tag closes before the tag:
This sentence contains HTML elements that are strong>em>not nested according to best practicesstrong>em>. While not technically necessary for rendering your HTML in the browser, nesting your tags in the proper order can help improve the readability of your HTML code for you or other developers.
// Tutorial //
How To Use HTML Attributes
HTML attributes can be used to change the color, size, and other features of HTML elements. For example, you can use an attribute to change the color or size of a font for a text element or the width and height for an image element. In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to use HTML attributes to set values for the size and color properties of HTML text elements.
An HTML attribute is placed in the opening tag like this:
element attribute="property:value;"> One common attribute is style , which allows you to add style properties to an HTML element. While it’s more common to use a separate stylesheet to determine the style of an HTML document, we will use the style attribute in our HTML document for this tutorial.
Using the Style Attribute
We can change multiple properties of an element with the style attribute. Clear your “index.html” file and paste the code below into your browser. (If you have not been following the tutorial series, you can review instructions for setting up an index.html file in our tutorial Setting Up Your HTML Project.
h1 style="font-size:40px;color:green;">This text is 40 pixels and green.h1> Before we load the file in our browser, let’s review each of the parts of this HTML element:
- h1 is the name of the tag. It refers to the largest-sized Heading element.
- style is the attribute. This attribute can take a variety of different properties.
- font-size is the first property we’re setting for the style attribute.
- 40px; is the value for the property font-size , which sets the text content of the element to 40 pixels.
- color is the second property we’re setting for the style attribute.
- green is the value for the property color , which sets the text content color to green
Note that the properties and values are contained by quotation marks, and that each property:value pair ends with a semicolon ; .
Save the file and reload it in your browser. (For instructions on loading the file in your browser, see our tutorial here.) You should receive something like this:
This text is 40 pixels and green.
How TO — Build a Website
Learn how to create a fast and awesome responsive website that will work on all devices, PC, laptop, tablet, and phone.
Create a Website with a CSS Framework
Ever heard about W3Schools Spaces? Here you can create your website from scratch or use a template.
A «Layout Draft»
It is always wise to draw a layout draft of the page design before building a website.
Having a «Layout Draft» will make it a lot easier to create a web site:
Navigation bar
The Band
Article
Article
Article
Footer
Doctype, Meta Tags, and CSS
The doctype should define the page as an HTML5 document:
A meta tag should define the character set to be UTF-8:
A viewport meta tag should make the web site work on all devices and screen resolutions:
W3.CSS should take care of all our styling needs and all device and browser differences:
To learn more about styling with W3.CSS, please visit our W3.CSS Tutorial.
Our first empty web page will look much like this:
Note: If you want to create a website from scratch, without the help of a CSS framework, read our How To Make a Website Tutorial.
Creating Page Content
Inside the element of our web site we will use our «Layout Picture» and create:
- A navigation bar
- A slide show
- A header
- Some sections and articles
- A footer
Semantic Elements
HTML5 introduced several new semantic elements. Semantic elements are important to use because they define the structure of web pages and helps screen readers and search engines to read the page correctly.
These are some of the most common semantic HTML elements:
The element can be used to define a part of a website with related content.
The element can be used to define an individual piece of content.
The element can be used to define a header (in a document, a section, or an article).
The element can be used to define a footer (in a document, a section, or an article).
The element can be used to define a container of navigation links.
In this tutorial we will use semantic elements.
However, it is up to you if you want to use elements instead.
The Navigation Bar
On our «Layout Draft» we have a «Navigation bar».
We can use a or element as a container for the navigation links.
The w3-bar class is a container for navigation links.
The w3-black class defines the color of the navigation bar.
The w3-bar-item and w3-button class styles the navigation links inside the bar.
Slide Show
On the «Layout Draft» we have a «Slide show».
For the slide show we can use a or element as a picture container:
We need to add a little JavaScript to change the images every 3 seconds:
// Automatic Slideshow — change image every 3 seconds
var myIndex = 0;
carousel();
function carousel() var i;
var x = document.getElementsByClassName(«mySlides»);
for (i = 0; i < x.length; i++) x[i].style.display = "none";
>
myIndex++;
if (myIndex > x.length)
x[myIndex-1].style.display = «block»;
setTimeout(carousel, 3000);
>
Sections and Articles
Looking at the «Layout Draft» we can see that the next step is to create articles.
First we will create a or element containing band information:
The w3-container class takes care of standard padding.
The w3-center class centers the content.
The w3-wide class provides a wider heading.
The w3-opacity class provides text transparency.
The max-width style sets a maximum with of the band description section.
Then we will add a paragraph describing the band:
We have created a fictional band website. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
The w3-justify class justifies the text’s right and left margins.
Then create a or with an or about each band-member:
John
Paul
Ringo
Footer
Finally we will use a or to create a footer:
The fa fa classes are Font Awesome Icon classes.
To use these classes you must link to a Font Awesome library:
To learn more about using icons, please visit our Icons Tutorial.