Grokking HTML
Learn HTML from your first file to full pages: text, links, images, media, lists, tables, forms, page layout, and meta tags, following the current standard.
Course Overview
HTML is the language that describes what each part of a web page is: a heading, a paragraph, an image, a link, a table, or a form field. A browser reads that description and draws the page, a screen reader reads it aloud, and a search engine reads it to understand the page. This course teaches you to write HTML that all three understand, starting from a single empty file. You begin by creating, saving, and opening your first HTML file, and by seeing how a browser turns it into a document tree. You then learn tags, attributes, and elements, the page layout elements such as header, nav, main, and footer, and how to write headings, paragraphs, and formatted text. Next you add images, audio, video, and links, and build lists and tables, including merged cells and tables that fit a phone screen. The later chapters cover forms, from text fields and choices to labels, grouping, and the checks a browser makes before it sends the data, and then the meta tags, favicons, and redirects that describe a page to browsers and search engines. The course follows the current HTML standard, every example was checked with the W3C validator and in a browser, and the lessons show what older tutorials teach that is now obsolete. Every chapter after the introduction ends with an assessment that explains each answer.
What you'll learn in Grokking HTML
- Create, save, and open an HTML file, and check your markup with the W3C validator.
- Write tags, attributes, and elements correctly, and nest elements in the order HTML allows.
- Choose headings by structure, and mark text as important, emphasized, quoted, or code.
- Embed audio and video with fallback content and captions that every reader can use.
- Build ordered, unordered, nested, and description lists, and choose the right one for the content.
- Build forms with the right controls, labels, groups, and the checks a browser makes before sending.
- Recognize obsolete HTML in older pages and replace it with current markup.
- Explain how a browser turns HTML into a document tree and then into the page you see.
- Structure a page with header, nav, main, section, article, aside, and footer.
- Add images with alt text, width, and height, and serve smaller files to small screens.
- Create links to other pages, to parts of a page, to email addresses, and to phone numbers.
- Build accessible tables with headers, captions, merged cells, and a layout that fits phones.
- Describe a page to browsers, search engines, and chat apps with meta tags, favicons, and redirects.
Course Content
Working With Text in HTML
Text Formatting in HTML
Working With HTML Lists
HTML Meta Tags and SEO
What people say about our courses
About the Author
Arslan Ahmad
Industry Expertise & Leadership
Arslan Ahmad is the lead author of Grokking HTML. As the founder of Design Gurus and a former FAANG hiring manager, he has worked at industry giants like Facebook (now Meta) and Microsoft.
He has conducted hundreds of system design interviews, giving him unique insight into what top tech companies look for in candidates.
The course also incorporates expertise from senior engineers at Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber, ensuring you learn system design best practices from professionals who have built and scaled real-world systems.
500+
Interviews Conducted
10k+
Students Taught
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FAQs
What is Grokking HTML?
It is a course on HTML, the language that describes every part of a web page: its headings, paragraphs, images, links, tables, and forms. It starts with a single empty file and ends with complete pages that browsers, screen readers, and search engines can read correctly.
Who is this course for?
It is for complete beginners who have never written code, and for new web developers who copy HTML from examples but want to know why the markup is written the way it is. Every new idea is explained in plain words before it gets its technical name.
What do I need to know before I start?
Nothing beyond using a computer and a web browser. The course does not assume any programming, CSS, or JavaScript knowledge. When an example needs one line of CSS, the lesson explains what that line does.
What do I need to follow along?
You need a plain-text code editor and a web browser. An early lesson shows how to create, save, and open your first HTML file, including the common traps such as a hidden .txt file extension. The course does not include a coding environment in the browser, so you try the examples on your own computer.
Is the course up to date with current HTML?
Yes. It follows the HTML Living Standard that browsers implement today. Every example was checked with the W3C validator and opened in a current browser during the review, and the lessons point out obsolete elements and attributes that older tutorials still teach, with what replaced them.
Does the course show what the browser displays?
Yes. Many lessons include a screenshot of the example as a browser draws it, and diagrams explain what happens behind the scenes, such as how a browser builds the document tree, how a form sends its data, and how merged table cells take their places.
Are there quizzes or assessments?
Yes. Every chapter after the introduction ends with an assessment, and each attempt draws a set of questions from a larger pool, so a second attempt gives you different questions. Most questions show a short piece of markup and ask what the browser or the validator does with it, and every option comes with an explanation.
Does the course cover accessibility?
Yes, as part of each topic rather than as a separate chapter. You learn alt text for images, labels for form fields, header cells and captions for tables, captions for video, and the page layout elements that let screen reader users jump between regions of a page.
Does the course teach SEO?
It teaches the HTML side of it: the title and meta description that search results show, Open Graph tags for link previews, favicons, the viewport tag for phones, and the right way to redirect a page that has moved. It does not cover keyword research or other marketing work.
What does the course not cover?
It does not teach CSS beyond single lines in examples, JavaScript, page layout with CSS, the dialog and popover features, web components, or how to publish a site online. HTML is the base that CSS and JavaScript work on, so the course prepares you to learn them next.
