Comments are piece of code which is ignored by any web browser. It is
good practice to comment your code, especially in complex documents, to
indicate sections of a document, and any other notes to anyone looking
at the code. Comments help you and others
understand your code.
HTML Comment lines are indicated by the special beginning tag <!--
and ending tag --> placed at the beginning and end of EVERY line to
be treated as a comment.
Comments do not nest, and the double-dash sequence "--" may not
appear inside a comment except as part of the closing --> tag. You
must also make sure that there are no spaces in the start-of-comment
string.
For example: Given line is a valid comment in HTML
<!-- This is commented out -->
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But following line is not a valid comment and will be displayed by
the borwser. This is because there is a space between the left angle
bracket and the exclamation mark.
< !-- This is commented out -->
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Be careful if you use comments to "comment out" HTML that would
otherwise be shown to the user, since some older browsers will still pay
attention to angle brackets inside the comment and close the comment
prematurely -- so that some of the text that was supposed to be inside
the comment mistakenly appears as part of the document.
Multiline Comments:
You have seen how to comment a single line in HTML. You can comment
multiple lines by the special beginning tag <!-- and ending tag
--> placed before the first line and end of the lastline to be
treated as a comment.
For example:
<!--
This is a multiline comment <br />
and can span through as many as lines you like.
-->
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Conditional Comments :
Conditional comments only work in Explorer on Windows, and are thus
excellently suited to give special instructions meant only for Explorer
on Windows. They are supported from Explorer 5 onwards, and it is even
possible to distinguish between 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0.
Conditional comments work as follows:
<!--[if IE 6]>
Special instructions for IE 6 here
<![endif]-->
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- Their basic structure is the same as an HTML comment (<!--
-->). Therefore all other browsers will see them as normal comments
and will ignore them entirely.
- Explorer Windows, though, has been programmed to recognize the
special <!--[if IE]> syntax, resolves the if and parses the
content of the conditional comment as if it were normal page content.
- Since conditional comments use the HTML comment structure, they can only be included in HTML files, and not in CSS files.
Using Comment tag
There are few browsers who supports <comment> tag to comment a part of code.
<p>This is <comment>not</comment> Internet Explorer.</p>
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Commenting Scripts and Style Sheets:
If you are using Java Script or VB Script in your HTML code then it
is recommended to put that script code inside proper HTML Comments to
make old browser works properly.
For example:
<script>
<!--
document.write("Hello World!")
//-->
</script>
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Similarly if you are using Casecading Style Sheet in your HTML code
then it is recommended to put that style sheet code inside proper HTML
Comments to make old browser works properly.
For example:
<style>
<!--
img{
border:0px;
}
//-->
</style>
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NOTE: To become familiar with JAVA Script and Cascading Style Sheet you need to refer different tutorial.