Before marking up your actual content, it is necessary to establish the proper global structure of the (X)HTML document itself. An (X)HTML document is composed of three parts: a declaration of the HTML or XHTML version used, a header containing information about the document, and the body containing the document's content.[*] This chapter takes a look at each of these components and, in doing so, introduces these elements used for establishing the global structure of the document:
If you use a professional web authoring tool to create web pages, chances are you're accustomed to the minimal document structural markup inserted for you when you select "New File." This chapter will give you the tools necessary to peek under the hood and decide if the automatically generated declarations accurately represent the mode in which you intend to author. |