The HTML cheat sheet is a one-page A4 printable document, designed to provide a quick reference for HTML. A description of what is on the cheat sheet follows, or if you are impatient, you can go straight to the full size HTML cheat sheet.

• PNG, 77KB
• PDF, 563KB

In case you didn't already know, there is a complementary CSS Cheat Sheet available as well.

I have been working on this particular cheat sheet for a little over a year. It's been a tough one to put together - partly because of the wealth of information that could be included (a few colours and element attributes being the obvious items), and partly because it is difficult to know what web designers might find useful in an HTML cheat sheet.

Tags

The bulk of the HTML cheat sheet is comprised of the tags themselves. They are split into sections according to their function. Deprecated and formatting tags (e.g. <b>) are not included in the lists. Each tag is accompanied with a description of its purpose, and where relevant is flagged as an "empty" tag.

Common Character Entities

There is a more expansive HTML Character Entities Cheat Sheet available, however that is more than many people need (or want), so I have included the most common character entity codes here as well.

Empty Tags

I have called the cheat sheet an HTML Cheat Sheet, however it is a little more complicated than that. HTML is an evolving language, and has passed through several incarnations. Most recently, use of XHTML has become more widespread. This cheat sheet is a useful tag reference for both HTML and XHTML. Empty tags exist within HTML however should not be closed with a trailing slash (i.e. <br />). In XHTML they must be closed. This section lists the empty tags for HTML and XHTML.

Attributes

Unfortunately, as the overriding principle of the cheat sheets is that they must be an easily printable single page A4 reference, I had far too little space to include all possible attributes for each element (though in future there may be a multi-page version that includes this information, if enough people are interested). However, I did have space to include some of the more important attributes. These sections include those core attributes.

Events

Events in HTML allow a developer to add client-side functionality to a page with JavaScript. While inline events are frowned on by those (including myself) who feel behaviour should be separated from content, they are still widely used and included here for that reason, broken down by type.

Download

The cheat sheet is available in two formats, PNG and PDF:

• PNG, 77KB
• PDF, 563KB

Update: 8 January 2006: The font issue should be resolved. If you were receiving a font error, please re-download the cheat sheet.

And finally, if you like the cheat sheets, and want to say thanks, please consider buying me something from my Amazon Wishlist. Thankyou very much to those who have already hunted it down and sent me something nice - I'm very grateful!

Please note: If you wish to link to the HTML cheat sheet from elsewhere, please link to this page so others find the description, rather than linking directly to the sheet.