HTML Tags An HTML document is just plain text with tags interspersed in the text. A tag is a bit of text between two angle brackets, e.g., . In some ways, tags are reminiscent of the typesetter s markups used to format a document. But the resemblance is more misleading than helpful. A typesetter has a well-defined layout with which to work.
Web designers face a greater challenge.
A browser may have a display area of 640 x 480 pixels or less. Or it may have a display area of more than 1280 x 960 pixels. Text is not legible unless about 10 x 10 pixels are used to represent a character. Thus, the web designer does not know if the layout allows 64 characters by 48 lines or more than twice that. The designer cannot know how much room will be available in the display area for a graphic.