Oracle WebServer User's Guide

Document Structure

When a browser receives a document, it determines how it should be interpreted. The very first tag you need in your HTML document is the <HTML> structure tag. This declares that the content of your document is written with HTML. A minimal HTML document would look like this:

<HTML>...the content of the document...
</HTML>

Head Tag

The head tag can be used right after the HTML declaration, or not at all in your document. This tag represents the prologue to the rest of the file. Avoid putting any text into the document <HEAD> tag. This tag is placed immediately before and after the <TITLE> tag, as shown in the following example:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>All the Hockey Greats</TITLE>
</HEAD>

Note: Technically, the start and end tags for <HTML>, <HEAD>, and <BODY> are not needed. However, they are recommended because the head and body structure tags allow a browser to determine certain properties of a document, such as the <TITLE>, without having to parse, or go through the whole document.

Title Tag

Most browsers display the contents of the <TITLE> tag in the title bar of the window containing the document, and in the bookmark file of the browser if it supports one. The title, surrounded by <TITLE> and </TITLE> tags, is placed between the Head tags, as shown above. The title of a document does not appear in the contents of the document window, however. You must separately indicate it as a heading inside the body of the document if you want it to appear there.