Overview
The <div> and <span> tags allow you to group together multiple elements to create sections or subsections on the page.
DIV Tag
For example, you may want to create one section of the page to act as your introduction and others to be in a chapter-type grouping. For this we would use the <div> tag.
<div class="introduction">
<h1>My Heading</h1>
<p>My paragraph.</p>
</div>
<div class="chapter_1">
<h2>Chapter 1</h2>
<p>My paragraph.</p>
</div>
<div class="chapter_2">
<h2>Chapter 2</h2>
<p>My paragraph.</p>
</div>Note
The <div> tag is something that sits at the block level on the page, meaning it starts on a new line and takes up space all the way from left to right on the page. Some block level tags are the <h1> through <h6> tags and the <p> tag.
Span Tag
The <span> tag is similar to the <div>, but is often used to group chunks of text and not larger groups of elements.
<p>I want just <span style="color: blue;">this text</span> to be blue.</p>Note
The <span> tag is an inline element that does not start on a new line. An inline element only takes up as much width as necessary. Most inline elements sit within a line of text for instance: <a>, <strong>, <b>, <i>, and the <img> tag.
HTML Notes:
- In our HTML section the term “tag” and “element” are often used interchangeably to refer to both the tag used to create a page element and the element created by the tag (<p> tag = <p> element = paragraph on the page)
- HTML5 is not case sensitive; so <P> is the same as <p>, <H1> is the same as <h1>
- Global attributes can be used with all HTML tags and are therefore not mentioned on every tag page
- To write clean, readable HTML code, it is best to use indentation whereas elements within elements are indented (tabbed or spaces) to create something that looks like a project outline
- The browser will automatically remove any extra spaces and lines in your HTML code when the page is displayed
- Double quotes or single quotes can be used around HTML attribute values, but when the attribute value itself contains one form of quote, it will be necessary to use the other around the attribute
We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.