Let’s face it — HTML can seem like a wall of angled brackets and weird abbreviations when you’re just starting out.
What exactly is a <div>? Why do some tags need a closing tag and others don’t? And what’s the deal with all the nesting?
The good news? You don’t have to figure it all out by yourself.
In this post, we’re breaking down the basics of HTML — what tags are, how they work, and how you can use AI to learn them faster (and fix them when things go wrong). Whether you’re new to coding or picking it up again after a break, this guide will help you get your footing in it.
We’re continuing our series inspired by the book HTML & CSS Coding with AI — and today, we’re starting at the very beginning: how websites are structured.
Why HTML is still worth learning
Even if AI can write it for you, knowing what HTML does — and how it works — gives you an edge.
Want to customize a web page layout?
Need to embed a video, form, or image on your site?
Trying to troubleshoot why something’s not showing up correctly?
That all starts with HTML. It’s the skeleton of every webpage. CSS makes things pretty, JavaScript adds interactivity — but HTML is what holds everything together.
Understanding it means you can guide AI more effectively. You’ll know what to ask, how to tweak the output, and how to notice when something just doesn’t look right.
What exactly is a tag?
At the core of HTML are tags. A tag is a piece of code that tells the browser what to do with the content it surrounds.
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
The tag <p> starts a paragraph, and </p> ends it. That’s it. Most HTML tags follow this open-and-close format.
Some tags — like <img> or <br> — don’t need a closing tag because they don’t “wrap” any content. They’re self-contained.
A quick tour of common HTML tags
Here are some tags you’ll use often and what they do:
<h1> to <h6>: Headings, from largest to smallest.
<p>: Paragraphs of text.
<a>: Links to other pages.
<img>: Images.
<ul>, <ol>, and <li>: Lists (ordered and unordered).
<div>: A container that groups elements together.
<span>: A lightweight inline container.
<form>: Used for user input (like sign-ups or searches).
Not sure what tag to use? Just ask AI:
“Which tag should I use to embed a YouTube video in HTML?”
You’ll get the answer instantly — often with a working example you can paste and test.
Structure matters (and nesting does too)
HTML isn’t just a list of tags — it’s a structure. You’re telling the browser what’s inside what.
Here’s a simple example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>My First Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello, world!</h1>
<p>This is my first HTML page.</p>
</body>
Think of it like a sandwich:
<html> is the wrapper.
<head> contains meta information like the page title.
<body> holds the stuff users actually see — like headings, text, and images.
It’s important to nest things properly. Tags need to open and close in the right order. AI can help spot when something’s out of place.
Prompt idea:
“Check if my HTML tags are correctly nested.”
Paste in your code and it’ll highlight any mistakes — along with suggestions to fix them.
You don’t need to remember everything
One of the biggest misconceptions when learning HTML is thinking you need to memorize every tag and attribute. You don’t.
What matters more is knowing what’s possible — and how to describe what you want.
Say you’re building a landing page and want a section with a background image, a headline, and a button. Try prompting:
“Generate HTML and CSS to embed an image with a border and shadow effect.”
That single sentence can generate a usable layout in seconds. From there, you can adjust the text, replace the image, or style it with CSS.
Ask for a more complex task
AI Chatbot can handle a more complex task with a simple prompt. For example, it can generate several components of web UI like buttons, cards, lists, and even navigation bars. You might ask, “Create a responsive navigation bar with dropdown menus and a search box,” and instantly get well-structured HTML and CSS code. Want to include icons or animations? Just specify that in your prompt. You can also ask it to organize content into sections, build forms, or create reusable layout templates. The key is to describe your goal clearly — AI can turn that vision into clean, working code you can learn from or build on.
Want a faster start? Try these AI prompts
Here are a few helpful prompts to speed up your HTML learning:
“Give me boilerplate HTML for a basic webpage.”
“Add an image with alt text and link it to another page.”
“Create a contact form with fields for name, email, and message.”
“Show an example of a responsive navigation bar using HTML.”
Each of these will return usable code you can learn from — and repurpose for your own site.
AI can accelerate your learning — but it still needs you
Even with all the AI support in the world, your understanding still matters. AI can write clean HTML. But it’s your vision, your edits, and your structure that make it useful.
The more you understand how HTML works, the more powerfully you can use AI to build faster, cleaner, more functional pages.
So don’t aim for perfection. Aim for progress. Learn by building. Tweak things. Ask questions. Break stuff and fix it.
That’s how real learning happens.
What’s next in the series
Now that you understand the building blocks of HTML, the next post will cover ‘How to Embed Media and Icons with HTML’, then we move onto CSS Fundamentals — how to style your content, layout your sections, and bring your webpage to life visually. We’ll also show how AI can help you experiment with colors, spacing, and fonts without getting lost in the details.
Stick around. It only gets more fun from here.
This article is a summary of ‘Master HTML & CSS Coding with AI: Revolutionize Your Learning’ by D-Libro — read the full version at https://d-libro.com/course/html-css-coding-with-ai/.
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