HTML Interview Questions and Answers: Comprehensive Guide

Looking to hire an HTML developer? Looking to land an HTML job? We’ll walk you through common HTML interview questions employers are asking new HTML recruits, from beginners to veterans.

It’s a competitive market out there for developers. Why? Because hypertext markup language is the language of the internet — the basic building block upon which most websites are built. An essential for frontend development especially. To put it simply, HTML ensures that what you’ve designed goes where it needs to on the page and looks the way it is intended.

Every developer should know HTML as a baseline for entering the profession of website development. But that doesn’t mean all HTML developers are created equal and that’s one of the reasons why HTML developer salary vary widely. If you want to hire the right developer with the right level of expertise, you’ve got to ask the right HTML Interview questions. It boils down to the point where you’ll need to know all the HTML development technical questions and answers, whether they’re advanced or common.

What Do You Need to Know Before Hiring an HTML Developer?

It’s not just a matter of asking HTML interview questions. Before you hire HTML developers, there are several general things you need to know. How many years of experience do they have? Do they have a programming or IT management degree? How many cases do they have in a portfolio? How many languages, frameworks and libraries do they use regularly? Do they have experience creating web applications for companies in your industry vertical?

This may seem like more than you need to know when you’re hiring a developer simply for HTML. But it rarely exists in a vacuum, and it’s important to think about the languages, libraries and frameworks where the HTML code will intersect.

It’s useful to find a developer that understands those too, so he or she can provide you with the service you need to create smooth-running, efficient frontend applications. That’s why it’s so important to have the right HTML developer interview questions and answers at the ready.

List of HTML Developer Interview Questions and Answers

If you’re looking to hire a frontend developer it’s important that you understand the common HTML Developer questions companies are using. We’ve outlined some of the more common test questions, and how candidates answer HTML interview questions for experienced programmers.

Before we get into the advanced HTML interview questions and answers, or even the HTML technical interview questions, we thought we would start with some of the most basic questions first.

Beginner-Level Questions (1-2 Years of Experience)

• How is HTML used in web development? This may seem obvious, but it’s a very common HTML interview question. HTML is a hypertext markup language that is common to the entire world wide web. Using it allows designers to create and display pages on the web. The hypertext markup language is added as tags to ensure that content displays consistently and as intended no matter what kind of device it’s displayed on.
• What is the function of Tags? Tags are HTML commands that are placed around copy and content to ensure it behaves on the page as it should. It starts with the <> symbol and ends with the closing tag, </>
  Ex. <h1> headline copy</h1>

• Does it always take two HTML tags to make a command? No. There are some tags where only one command is needed, such as <img>, which can serve as a closing tag.
• Can HyperText Markup Language be used to create lists on a web page? Yes. Several different types of lists can be created, including:
  Numbered/ordered
  Unordered
  Definition lists
  Directory
  Menu Lists

• What are the differences between HTML and XML? HTML is good for rendering things on the screen, while XML is better for describing what things are. HTML emphasizes the frontend, focusing on the user experience, while XML is more backend focused, and regulates processes and databases talking to each other.
• Why do boxes sometimes appear on a rendered page that’s been designed with HyperText Markup Language? Some HTML commands are not supported by the browser that’s currently running the page. When this happens small broken boxes appear where the code used to be. It keeps the characters from rendering properly on the page.
• What is an image map? By using the <map> tag, you can link an image on the page to a web page when the user clicks on it. This is one of the most common HTML Interview questions for beginners.
• Create a tag sequence using HTML that has this output: 50 pcs 100 500 10 pcs 5 50.

Intermediate HTML developer interview questions and answers (2-4 years experience)

Once candidates complete the common questions, they’ll be asked more technical and advanced HTML developer questions and be expected to know the answer. After working full time as an HTML developer for a few years, you’ll find most should easily know the answer to the questions below, as well as some of the more advanced HTML interview questions and answers.

• Why do developers often use stylesheets in HyperText Markup Language? When you create “stylesheets” in HTML, you can create a template design that can remain consistent from page to page. This shorthand makes your coding more replicable and makes it easier to both build pages out and make changes.
• What is whitespace in HTML design and what are its advantages to the developer? In HyperText Markup Language design, whitespace is considered a single space character—an empty sequence of space. By using it, you instruct your browser to collapse many spaces into one single space, improving your indent. This has the advantage of making your content tags more readable and better organized.

• How do you keep list elements straight and orderly in an HTML file? Indents are the key to keeping a list neat on an HTML page. The indent command can be used for lists, as well as subnested lists that contain more information.
• Is it possible to insert a copyright symbol in HyperText Markup Language? If so, what is the command for it? Yes, it’s possible to insert copyright symbols using HTML on the browser page. It can be done by using the type&copy, or &#169 in the HTML file.
• How do you create links/shortcuts to different sections within the same web page? Shortcut links can be created by using the <a> tag and an accompanying reference with the # symbol.
• Why are meta tags used? Can you show some examples of them? Meta tags are designed to speak to the search bots that are crawling your page. It tells them what is on the page (page description), who the author is, character set, keywords, and much more. They are critical to helping the page get found and an important part of the overall website’s SEO. Here’s an example of what meta tag code looks like:

• How are HTML class settings and IDs used to simplify coding? HTML code can be used to create a “class” from a group of CSS attributes. By grouping them together they can be expressed as a group under one or more HTML elements. To create a class in CSS, a period is used followed by the class name. The element is then added via the class attribute and class name.
  Similarly, you can create a defined class for all the elements, assigning them all a common style. Within CSS, ID selectors are shown after the # symbol, which can also be paired with a HyperText Markup Language element’s ID attribute. Here are code examples that show how a class is expressed.
  Here’s an example:

.test {
font-family: Helvetica;
font-size: 20;
background: black;
}

p.column {font-color: black;
}
#example1 {background: blue;)

• How are inline elements and block-level elements used in HyperText Markup Language? Can you give examples? When you have text or any other element that needs to fill the entire width of the block it resides in, then that is a block element. There are many kinds of block elements, such as <div>, <p>, <img>, <section> and so on.
• By contrast, inline elements fill the space, but can stop short of the edge or wrap to fit. Examples of inline elements are <a>, <b>, <label> and <span>.
• Can a programmer add a comment in HTML? The answer is yes. Coders can work comments into the text code that are only for the eyes of the developers who may work on the site in the future. HTML comments can be made by creating code that begins with <! And ends with ->.
  For Example:

<!-- This is one line comment ?
<!-- This is multiple         line of two or         more line -->

HTML Technical Interview Questions: Advanced Level (5 years and up)

If you’re considering hiring a senior developer you need to understand advanced HTML interview questions and answers. Extensive testing is common, and HTML interview questions for experienced developers can get very technical, indeed. Here are some common HTML Interview questions we’ve seen developers get asked.

• HTML5 has unrolled some new FORM elements. What are they, and why are they helpful? The new functionality of HTML5’s new FORMS gives developers far more flexibility. The new elements include: <keygen>, which indicates a key-pair generator field; <datalist>,a tag that allows you to call out your list of options for input controls; <output>, which highlights the end result of calculations you’ve scripted.
• What are the advantages of using an application cache in HTML5? This is one of the most common HTML interview questions. When an application is cached, a user doesn’t have to be logged into the Internet to access and view a site. Cached resources also load more quickly. And because the web browser can only update new information from the server (and not external sources), this reduces the server load.

• Please create a program that will render nested webpages in HTML. A “nested” web page is a webpage that resides inside another webpage. To program this, a developer must use an iframe tag to develop an inline frame. Programming looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>   
<html>   
<body>  
<h2>HTML Iframes example</h2>   
<p>Use the height and width attributes to specify the size of the iframe:</p>   
<iframe src="https://hackr.io/" height="400" width="600"></iframe>   
</body>   
</html>

• What is SVG, and how does it relate to HTML programming? SVG is a term used to describe two dimensional vector/raster graphics, such as vector diagrams, pie charts and dimensional X-Y graphs, as a start. It is HTML code typically used as SML text files. Like most HTML technical interview questions, it can be answered as a code example:

<!DOCTYPE html>   
<html>   
<body>   
<h2>HTML SVG example</h2>   
<svg width="400" height="400">   
<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="40" stroke="black" stroke-width="6" fill="red" />    
</svg>
</body>   
</html> 

• How many formats does HTML audio code support? Audio code for HTML currently includes the mp3, WAV, and Ogg formats.
• Program the code for a clickable button that can be nested on an HTML page.

<!DOCTYPE html>   
<html>   
<body>   
<h2>HTML Button Tag Example</h2>   
<button name="button" type="button">CLICK ME</button>
</body>   
</html> 

• How do you program an HTML Marquee Tag, and what does it do? This may seem like one of the advanced HTML interview questions and answers, but the technical answer is fairly common. The marquee tag is a simple command that allows an image or designated text to scroll up or down, left or right on the screen. To use a marquee tag, <marquee> (insert  copy that’s affected) </marquee>

• How does Drag and Drop (DnD) work in HTML5? What kinds of DND events are supported? When a user is able to “drag and drop,” they can use the mouse to highlight a text or image, drag it to the location on the page they desire, and drop it into position with just a click. In HTML4, developers had to use complex custom jQuery and JavaScript programming to make this function work. But with HTML5, new drag and drop functionality was introduced, with an API that supported all the DnD functions through the browser. Most of the browser platforms — Safari, Firefox, and Chrome — now support this API. DnD events that trigger the API include:
  
  Dragleave — when the user releases the mouse mid-drag
  Dragover — when a drag is occurring but the mouse moves over an element
  Dragstart — when a user initiates the drag
  Dragenter – when a user moves the element they are dragging over the “target” object.
  Drag — the trigger that occurs when the object is dragged in general

• How does a localStorage and a sessionStorage object differ? This one one of the more difficult HTML technical interview questions as it deals with the higher-level functions in a user experience. However, in general, sessionStorage objects are only stored during any user’s individual session on the web. But LocalStorage has more long-lasting applications. Here’s how it breaks down:
  
  SessionStorage objects can only be stored for one session, while localStorage objects can be stored indefinitely, with no expiration date.
  LocalStorage objects do now get deleted when the browser window closes, as sessionStorage data does
  LocalStorage data can be shared between multiple windows of a browser. This flexibility is not possible with sessionStorage objects.

• What sections would you typically find in a manifest file? When HTML interview questions for experienced programmers are asked, technical, advanced answers are commonly what’s expected. It’s important to make sure all the areas are fully explained. In this case, a manifest file is a text file that helps the browser to know where to direct material for the cache. A successful manifest file must have three sections:
  
  CACHE MANIFEST — hypertext markup language will perform the caching of files in this section after they are downloaded.
  NETWORK – A server connection is needed for files to be listed here. The browser cannot cache them.
  FALLBACK – If a page is not accessible to cache at the time of the command, this delineates where the fallback page is, so the file can be rerouted.

• What are Transitional and Strict DocTypes, and how do they differ from each other? A Strict DocType is a doc that includes all the necessary programming properties and components. It excludes some elements, like expostulated components or Framesets. A Transitional DocType is different in that regard. It contains all the components and properties that are needed and includes some items that a Strict DocType excludes, such as presentational elements (like text style). It also excludes the use of Framesets.

As you can see, there’s a number of HTML interview questions for experienced developers. Whether they can answer them correctly will truly separate the experts from the beginners.

How to Prepare for an Interview if You are an Employer?

While reading blogs like this one for HTML interview questions and answers can help you understand a technical interview process. With this knowledge it can be common to grill your interviewee with technical, HTML developer interview questions and answers, it’s important not to go overboard with your technical vetting. Closely examine their portfolio ahead of time, and tailor the questions you ask to the expertise they have.

This will help you suss out the pretenders from the genuine article, without tripping them up with questions too far over their heads. If your projects will require extra knowledge besides what they’ve presented, then craft questions that will reflect that specifically. It’s best not to rely strictly on a “set” skills quiz you just drag off the internet. Ask your interviewee how they like to work and how their reporting situations were structured with their former bosses.

Conclusion

Finding the right HTML developer for your project can be tricky, especially given the fact that labor markets for coders are tight all over the world. But if you ask the right HTML developer interview questions, you’ll be on the fast track to finding the right fit. If you’d like to leave the vetting of incoming talent to seasoned IT consultants, ProCoders would be happy to help. We have HTML developers for hire right on our staff, ready and able to onboard for your project in as little as two days. We’d love to show you how to put our expertise to work for you.