The major mode for editing html files in emacs (in our configuration) is html-helper-mode. This provides with menu driven or mnemonic key bindings for entring the most important html tags. It drives its own indentation style. It also defines regular expressions for syntax coloring using font-lock.
A hook will update the Last modified field automatically before saving, if enclosed between a pair of comments:
<!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: <!-- hhmts end -->
This mode will be used for every file with an extension of .html or .htm.
New files matching this pattern will be created using a template. This template is specified using a combination of variables: auto-insert-alist, auto-insert-type-alist and auto-insert-path.
Finally, incremental spelling is aware of the html syntax and will jump over tags.