Encyclopedia / HTML

HTML document

The text file that is the page.

Every page is a tree that starts with <!doctype html>, then <html lang> containing a <head> (information about the page) and a <body> (the page itself). It's the only layer a page can't do without. CSS and JavaScript are optional extras.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>…</head>
  <body>…</body>
</html>

Related terms

<head> Semantic HTML DOM

Where it shows up in a page load

  1. Step 8: Parse HTML → DOM. The browser reads the HTML from top to bottom and builds the DOM, a tree of every element. Along the way it finds the CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images and requests them. Many of those requests run in parallel.

Watch the full request journey →

More in HTML

The document itself: what each piece of content is.

<head> Semantic HTML DOM

Open in the interactive encyclopedia →