[Please note: This is a very old, classic reference from 1994, originally created at the University of Kansas
I have made a few minor changes to reflect current practice.
The section on FORMS is particularly useful
- Lin Jensen]

HTML Quick Reference

HTML is composed of a set of elements that define a document and guide its display. An HTML element may include a name, some attributes and some text or hypertext, and will appear in an HTML document as

<tag_name> text </tag_name>

<tag_name attribute_name=argument> text </tag_name>, or just

<tag_name>

For example:

<title> My Useful Document </title>

and

<a href="argument"> text </a>

An HTML document is composed of a single element:

<html> . . . </html>

that is, in turn, composed of head and body elements:

<head> . . . </head>

and

<body> . . . </body>

Elements usually placed in the head element

<title> . . . </title>: Specify document title
<link>: Specify relationships to other documents. Attributes: same as Anchor below
<meta>: Specify information about the document, such as author and character set
<base>: Specify the name of the file in which the current document is stored. This is useful when link references within the document do not include full pathnames (i.e., are partially qualified).

Elements usually placed in the body element

The following sections describe elements that can be used in the body of the document.

Text Elements

<p>...</p>: The text between the start and end tags will be formatted as a paragraph.
<pre> . . . </pre>: Identifies text that has already been formatted (preformatted) by some other system and must be displayed as is. Preformatted text may include embedded tags, but not all tag types are permitted.
<blockquote> . . . </blockquote>: Include a section of text quoted from some other source.

Hyperlinks or Anchors

<a name="target_anchor_name"> . . . </a>: Define a target location in a document
<a href="#anchor_name"> . . . </a>: Link to a location in the same file
<a href="URL"> . . . </a>: Link to another file
<a href="URL#target_string"> . . . </a>: Link to a target location in another file
<a href="URL?search_word+search_word"> . . . </a>: Send a search string to a server. Different servers might interpret the search string differently. In the case of word oriented search engines, multiple search words might be specified by separating individual words with a plus sign (+).

Required attributes for anchors: one of name or href.

Optional attributes: rel, rev, urn, title, methods. Note that not all methods are valid attributes to an anchor.

The structure of a Universal Resource Locator (URL) is similar to:

: resource_type://host.domain:port/pathname

where the possible resource types include: file, http, news, gopher, telnet, and wais, and the colon followed by the TCP port number is optional. A more complete description is presented in http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/Addressing.html

Headers

<h1> . . . </h1> Most prominent header
<h2> . . . </h2>
<h3> . . . </h2>
<h4> . . . </h4>
<h5> . . . </h5>
<h6> . . . </h6> Least prominent header

Logical Styles

<em> . . . </em>: Emphasis
<strong> . . . </strong>: Stronger emphasis
<code> . . . </code>: Display an HTML directive
<samp> . . . </samp>: Include sample output
<kbd> . . . </kbd>: Display a keyboard key
<var> . . . </var>: Define a variable
<dfn> . . . </dfn>: Display a definition
<cite> . . . </cite>: Display a citation

Physical Styles

<b> . . . </b>: Bold font
<i> . . . </i>: Italics
<u> . . . </u>: Underline
<tt> . . . </tt>: Typewriter font

Definition list/glossary: <dl>

<dl>
<dt> First term to be defined
<dd> Definition of first term
<dt> Next term to be defined
<dd> Next definition
</dl>

The <dl> attribute compact can be used to generate a definition list requiring less space.

Present an unordered list: <ul>

<ul>
<li> First item in the list </li>
<li> Next item in the list </li>
</ul>

Present an ordered list: <ol>

<ol>
<li> First item in the list </li>
<li> Next item in the list </li>
</ol>

Present an interactive menu: <menu>

<menu>
<li> First item in the menu </li>
<li> Next item </li>
</menu>

Present a directory list of items: <dir>

<dir>
<li> First item in the list </li>
<li> Second item in the list </li>
<li> Next item in the list </li>
</dir>

Items should be less than 20 characters long.

Entities

&keyword;: Display a particular character identified by a special keyword. For example the entity & specifies the ampersand ( & ), and the entity < specifies the less than ( < ) character. Note that the semicolon following the keyword is required, and the keyword must be one from the list presented in:; http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Entities.html; -or-; The ISO LATIN I character set
&#ascii_equivalent;: Use a character literally. Again note that the semicolon following the ASCII numeric value is required.

HTML Forms Interface

The HTML forms interface allows document creators to define HTML documents containing forms to be filled out by users. When a user fills out the form and presses a button indicating the form should be "submitted," the information on the form is sent to a server for processing. The server will usually prepare an HTML document using the information supplied by the user and return it to the client for display.

The following tags implement the forms interface:

<form> . . . </form>
<input>
<select> . . . </select>
<option> . . . </option>
<textarea> . . . </textarea>

The last four tags can only be used within a <form> . . . </form> element.

<form> . . . </form>

ATTRIBUTES: action, method
ARGUMENTS for:

<input> (there is no ending tag)

Defines an input field where the user may enter information on the form.

ATTRIBUTES: type, name, value, checked, size, maxlength
ARGUMENTS for:

<select> . . . </select>

defines a list of options the user can select for the field. This element employs the <option> element for each item in the list.

ATTRIBUTES: name, size, multiple
ARGUMENTS for:

<option>

Within the <select> element the <option> tags are used to define the possible values for the select field as in:

<select>
<option>textstring 1</option>
<option>textstring 2</option>
<option>textstring 3</option>
</select>

textstring 1, textstring 2, and textstring 3 represent possible values of the select field.

ATTRIBUTES: selected
ARGUMENTS for:

<textarea> . . . default text . . . </textarea>

Defines a rectangular field where the user may enter text data. If "default text" is present it will be displayed when the field appears. Otherwise the field will be blank.

ATTRIBUTES: name, rows, cols
ARGUMENTS for:

Miscellaneous

Place a comment in the HTML source

<address> . . . </address>

Present address information

<img src="URL" alt="Alternate Text">

Include a graphic image. "URL" is the location and filename of the image file. The alt attribute allows a text string to be put in place of the image in clients that cannot display images.
The image is displayed "inline", between words of text.

Other possible attributes are: ismap and align.

The argument for align can be one of top, middle, or bottom. These refer to how the image is aligned vertically with the surrounding text.
The argument for align can also be left or right. In this case the image is "floated" to one side, and the text flows around it. [This use is now deprecated]

<br>

Forces a line break immediately and retains the same style.

<hr>

Places a horizontal rule or separator between sections of text.

<link rev="RELATIONSHIP" rel="RELATIONSHIP" href="URL">

The link tag allows you to define a relation ship between the "URL" specified and the HTML file. The rel attribute specifies the relationship between the HTML file and the "URL". The rev attribute specifies the relationship between the "URL" and the HTML file. The only currently implemented link relation ship is rev="made".

allows the file maker or owner to be specified in the link "URL". The most common use of this is as follows:

Michael Grobe
Academic Computing Services
The University of Kansas
grobe@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu