What are HTML entities? What are their functions? What are the types of them? When should we use them? If you ever being curious about them, relax, your wondering ends here.
Entities are HTML codes that function to draw certain characters on browsers. These codes are to be located in HTML source, and the drawn characters appear in browsers (along with common texts).
Entities are needed to write posts / articles explaining about HTML tags, such as how to’s, tips, etc. Without them, the example tags in the posts will not be visible to any visitor, since browsers will apply them instead of showing them. For more details, visit How to Write Tags
Entities are also used to draw certain characters that are not available in keyboards. We cannot use our keyboards to put some characters like the symbols of registered trademark (®), copyright (©), Euro currency (€), etc.
There two types of entity codes: Entity names and entity numbers.
Entity names are the newer type that is easy to remember. If you use new blogging / publishing platform, it is better to use this type of entities. Older browsers do not support this type, only newer ones. The code pattern is &entity_names; (such as <)
Entity numbers are the older type that is supported all browsers including the old ones. However, new blogging / publishing platforms are known to be not supporting this type, such as Blogger. The code pattern is &#entity_number; (such as <)