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HTML Hero

A Beginner's Guide to HTML (2nd Edition)

HTML Hero
This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-11-05
Ollie Academy

Build and publish your first real website from scratch, one tag at a time, and understand every line of it. No experience needed.

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About

About

About the Book

Every website you've ever visited is built on HTML. HTML Hero teaches it from the very first step: no experience, no special software, no computer science degree. If you can create a folder and save a file, you can learn HTML.

Who it's for
  • Complete beginners who have never written a line of code
  • Students who want a clear, structured introduction to web development
  • Creators, marketers and small business owners who want to understand their own website
  • Career changers taking their first step into tech
What's inside
  • 97 pages, 11 chapters: text, links and navigation, images and media, semantic page structure, tables, forms, interactive HTML (details, popovers, dialogs), accessibility and SEO, and publishing your site
  • A hands-on mission, a recap card and a quick quiz in every chapter, with all the answers
  • An HTML cheat sheet and a glossary
  • "Modern HTML" boxes that cover features older tutorials miss
  • The finished project files (ZIP), to check your work
What you'll build

A three-page personal website: a Home page with an introduction, skills and an FAQ; a Projects page with image cards and a table; and a Contact page with a complete, accessible form. In the last chapter you publish it online for free with Netlify Drop or GitHub Pages.

FAQ
  • Do I need any experience? No. Chapter 1 explains what HTML is and walks you through setting up a free code editor.
  • What do I need? A computer (Windows, Mac, Linux or ChromeOS), an up-to-date browser and Visual Studio Code, which is free.
  • What's new in the 2nd edition? It was fully revised in November 2026. It now covers modern features such as popovers and the dialog element, plus an accessibility checklist, SEO and social sharing basics, and a publishing chapter.
  • What comes next? Captain CSS takes the exact site you build here and makes it beautiful. Super Script then adds JavaScript.
  • What format is it? A PDF you can read on any device, plus a ZIP of project files.
  • Questions? Email support.olliecode@gmail.com.

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Contents

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1: Your First Web Page
    • What is HTML?
    • HTML, CSS and JavaScript: the hero team
    • How a web page reaches your screen
    • A very short history
    • Setting up your tools
    • Your first web page
    • Peek behind the mask: developer tools
  • Chapter 2: The Anatomy of HTML
    • Elements and tags
    • Attributes: extra information
    • Nesting elements
    • Void elements
    • The page template, line by line
    • Comments
    • Whitespace
    • When things go wrong
  • Chapter 3: Writing Text Content
    • Headings: the outline of your page
    • Paragraphs
    • Strong, emphasis and friends
    • Lists
    • Quotations
    • Code, keyboard keys and preformatted text
    • Special characters (entities)
    • Dividers and line breaks
  • Chapter 4: Links and Navigation
    • The anchor element
    • Absolute and relative paths
    • Linking to a section of a page
    • Email and phone links
    • Opening links in a new tab
    • Download links
    • Writing good link text
    • Building a navigation menu
  • Chapter 5: Images and Media
    • Adding an image
    • Writing great alt text
    • Choosing an image format
    • Width, height and lazy loading
    • Figures and captions
    • Responsive images (a quick look)
    • Video and audio
    • Embedding content with iframes
  • Chapter 6: Semantic Page Structure
    • What does “semantic” mean?
    • The main structural elements
    • Section or article?
    • <div> and <span>: the generic containers
    • Other meaningful elements
    • Skip links
    • Putting it all together
  • Chapter 7: Tables
    • When to use a table
    • Your first table
    • Captions
    • Grouping rows: thead, tbody, tfoot
    • Making tables accessible with scope
    • Merging cells
  • Chapter 8: Forms
    • How forms work
    • Labels and inputs: the core pair
    • Input types
    • Checkboxes and radio buttons
    • Grouping fields: fieldset and legend
    • Text areas, menus and buttons
    • Built-in validation
    • Autocomplete: help people fill in forms faster
    • The complete contact form
  • Chapter 9: Interactive HTML
    • Expanding sections: details and summary
    • Pop-ups with the popover attribute
    • Modal windows: the dialog element
    • Progress and meter
  • Chapter 10: Accessibility, Search and Sharing
    • Accessibility is for everyone
    • The accessibility checklist
    • Search engine optimization (SEO) basics
    • Favicons
    • Social sharing previews
    • The complete head
    • Free quality tools
  • Chapter 11: Publishing Your Site
    • Before you launch
    • Hosting and domains in plain English
    • Option 1: Netlify Drop (the fastest way)
    • Option 2: GitHub Pages (the professional’s choice)
    • Other free hosts
    • Your own domain name
    • What’s next?

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