Can someone explain what a "header" does for a web site?

[jdc]

I can increase the header and footer on my pages, and I see that it adds space while moving the whole site down.

Is there something else you would do with it? or use it for?

If I want more space above my site, wouldnt I just use padding instead?

Any insights or even pointing to a web site that would explain it is fine.

Googled and looked at wikipedia, no answer... unless Im using the wrong words...

[blooz]

A header is where you see what a web site is about or is called, like the Macresource header with logo at the top of this page.

[deckeda]

headers and footers are organizational constructs. You put stuff in there that is usually static for most if not all pages within a site.

[jdc]

thanks.

wasnt sure if thats what they were referring to or not.

since this is iWeb, each page redraws regardless -- Im pretty sure creating a header wont matter.

[Seacrest]

There's no such technical beast as a "web page header."

Many pages have areas at the top of the page like a masthead which may comprise of some navigational, informational or other content, but this is entirely up to the web designer or team. This content is simply comprised of HTML elements like DIV, P, UL, OL, IMG, EMBED/OBJECT, H1, H2 or whatever else you fancy.

There are also HTML elements called "headers," which function like headlines or subheads, and use the tags, H1 - H6.

Then there is the HTML "HEAD" element itself, which contains information that the end user does not generally see on the page, like the document title, meta information, links to external resources like CSS or javascript files, etc.

There's also HTTP request and response headers, which is an entirely different thing altogether. These are machine codes which communicate messages from the server to the client like the type of content that's being sent, redirect codes, and other important stuff.

[jdc]

Thanks for the details Seacrest.

I wish I understood even 1/4 of that. =(

[JoeM]

Seacrest summed it up nicely. Maybe some images will help:

Here's what he referred to similar to a mastheadand what many refer to as the web sites header:


The second he gave are actual tags you put around text that serve as a typical headline or sub head in the content of the page and are written like this:

This is a Pretty Frick'n Big Headline

The third he mentions is the HTML tag. see here:
http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_head.asp

The last I don't belive you are referring to but you can see it here:
http://djce.org.uk/dumprequest

I believe you are originally referring to the top area of the page. Generally you put your logo, navigation and other elements like maybe login fileds that will be consistent thru your site there. You can build a footer for certain elements as well.