HTML Essentials
Ten topics on the markup you already recognise and the behaviour underneath it: what the parser does with a tag you left open, which controls a form actually submits, and why an empty alt is sometimes right and sometimes the bug.
Who it is for
Knows the syntax, not yet the behaviour.
Start here. It assumes you can read the language and nothing else.
You will get the most out of it if you have written HTML recently enough to read it without effort, and have been surprised by it at least once.
How long it takes
90 graded questions at roughly 45 seconds each is about 68 minutes of answering in total.
At the default five questions a day, and because the session mixes in your other courses, expect around 18 days — call it 3 weeks — to see everything once, plus a few weeks of thinning reviews after that before it is all mastered.
A question is mastered on the third correct answer, once the gap between reviews has grown past a week — so a course cannot be finished in a weekend however long you sit with it.
Question mix
- 60 multiple choice
- 10 concept cards
- 10 predict the output
- 10 put it in order
- 10 matching questions
Syllabus
What you will be asked about
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01
Elements, Tags & Attributes
Read an element correctly, including the ones that take no content and the attributes that carry no value.
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02
The Document & Its Head
Explain what a browser builds around your markup, and what belongs in the head rather than the body.
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03
Text, Whitespace & Entities
Predict the text a browser renders from a snippet, including what happens to your spacing and your ampersands.
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04
Links & Paths
Work out where a link goes from its href alone, and what a link may legally contain.
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05
Lists & Tables
Build a table whose structure matches the DOM the parser actually creates, and choose the list that carries the right meaning.
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06
Images & Media
Write an img element whose alt text, dimensions and fallbacks say what you actually mean.
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07
Forms & Controls
Say what a form will submit, and wire a label to the control it names.
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08
What the Parser Really Does
Predict the tree a browser builds from markup that is not well formed, instead of the tree you typed.
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09
Attributes & Their Values
Tell a boolean attribute from a valued one, and an attribute in the markup from a property in the DOM.
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10
Semantics & Accessibility
Choose an element for the meaning it carries, and explain what that choice gives a screen reader user.
A question from this course
Elements, Tags & Attributes
How many elements does the parser build here?
<img src="cat.png" alt="A cat"></img>Show the answer
A One: the end tag closes nothing and is thrown away
You may have expected the end tag to pair up with the start tag, because that is how every non-void element works. But img is a void element: it is finished the moment its start tag ends, so there is no open element for </img> to close and the parser discards it. The attributes on the start tag are untouched.
The rest of the track
HTML at every depth
HTML Core
Forms as they actually serialise, tables with real headers, and the head you copy without reading. Ten topics on the markup you write every day and the parts of it that do not behave the way the tag name suggests.
HTML Errors & Edge Cases
What the parser does when you get it wrong: unclosed tags, void elements written as containers, blocks inside paragraphs, and text foster-parented out of a table. Every item shows the tree you actually got rather than the one you wrote.
HTML Idioms & Pitfalls
The markup people write out of habit that is wrong or wasteful. Div soup, lists that are not lists, headings used for size, ARIA that overrides what the element already said, and alt text that describes the wrong thing.
HTML Advanced
Insertion modes, inert templates, shadow boundaries and slot assignment, custom element upgrade timing, and what each iframe sandbox token actually permits. The parts that still catch authors who have written HTML for years.
HTML Interview Questions
What interviewers ask about markup and what the honest answer is: the accessibility tree against the DOM tree, constraint validation, parser error recovery, resource loading order, and the perennial "what does this render".
Start HTML Essentials
in tomorrow’s session.
Enrol and this course joins your daily five, mixed in with everything else you are studying — 90 questions spread over about 18 days rather than dropped on you at once.
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