HTML5 Attributes

HTML Attributes

HTML elements can have attributes
Attributes provide additional information about an element
Attributes are always specified in the start tag
Attributes come in name/value pairs like: name="value"
We have seen few HTML tags and their usage like heading tags <h1>, <h2>, paragraph tag <p> and other tags. We used them so far in their simplest form, but most of the HTML tags can also have attributes, which are extra bits of information.

An attribute is used to define the characteristics of an HTML element and is placed inside the element's opening tag. All attributes are made up of two parts: a name and a value:

The name is the property you want to set. For example, the paragraph <p> element in the example carries an attribute whose name is align, which you can use to indicate the alignment of paragraph on the page.

The value is what you want the value of the property to be set and always put within quotations. The below example shows three possible values of align attribute: left, center and right.

Attribute names and attribute values are case-insensitive. However, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends lowercase attributes/attribute values in their HTML 4 recommendation.

The href Attribute

HTML links are defined with the <a> tag. The link address is specified in the href attribute:

Example

<a href="http://www.w3schools.com">This is a link</a>

Try it Yourself »

You will learn more about links and the <a> tag later in this tutorial.

Size Attributes

HTML images are defined with the <img> tag.

The filename of the source (src), and the size of the image (width and height) are all provided as attributes:

Example

<img src="w3schools.jpg" width="104" height="142">

Try it Yourself »

The image size is specified in pixels: width="104" means 104 screen pixels wide.

You will learn more about images and the <img> tag later in this tutorial.

The alt Attribute

The alt attribute specifies an alternative text to be used, when an HTML element cannot be displayed.

The value of the attribute can be read by "screen readers". This way, someone "listening" to the webpage, i.e. a blind person, can "hear" the element.

Example

<img src="w3schools.jpg" alt="W3Schools.com" width="104" height="142">

Try it Yourself »

The lang Attribute

The document language can be declared in the <html> tag.

The language is declared in the lang attribute.

Declaring a language is important for accessibility applications (screen readers) and search engines:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en-US">

<body>

<h1>My First Heading</h1>

<p>My first paragraph.</p>

</body>

</html>

Core Attributes

The four core attributes that can be used on the majority of HTML elements (although not all) are:

id

title

class

style

The id Attribute

The id attribute of an HTML tag can be used to uniquely identify any element within an HTML page. There are two primary reasons that you might want to use an id attribute on an element:

If an element carries an id attribute as a unique identifier it is possible to identify just that element and its content.

If you have two elements of the same name within a Web page (or style sheet), you can use the id attribute to distinguish between elements that have the same name.

We will discuss style sheet in separate tutorial. For now, let's use the id attribute to distinguish between two paragraph elements as shown below.

EXAMPLE

<p id="html">This para explains what is HTML</p>
<p id="css">This para explains what is Cascading Style Sheet</p>

The title Attribute

The title attribute gives a suggested title for the element. They syntax for the title attribute is similar as explained for id attribute:

The behavior of this attribute will depend upon the element that carries it, although it is often displayed as a tooltip when cursor comes over the element or while the element is loading.

EXAMPLE

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>The title Attribute Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h3 title="Hello HTML!">Titled Heading Tag Example</h3>
</body>
</html>

This will produce following result:

Titled Heading Tag Example

Now try to bring your cursor over "Titled Heading Tag Example" and you will see that whatever title you used in your code is coming out as a tooltip of the cursor.

The class Attribute

The class attribute is used to associate an element with a style sheet, and specifies the class of element. You will learn more about the use of the class attribute when you will learn Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). So for now you can avoid it.

The value of the attribute may also be a space-separated list of class names. For example:

class="className1 className2 className3"

The style Attribute

The style attribute allows you to specify Casecading Style Sheet (CSS) rules within the element.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>The style Attribute</title>
</head>
<body>
<p style="font-family:arial; color:#FF0000;">Some text...</p>
</body>
</html>

Web browser

Some text...

At this point of time, we are not learning CSS, so just let's proceed without bothering much about CSS. Here you need to understand what are HTML attributes and how they can be used while formatting content.

Internationalization Attributes

There are three internationalization attributes, which are available for most (although not all) XHTML elements.

dir

lang

xml:lang

The dir Attribute

The dir attribute allows you to indicate to the browser the direction in which the text should flow. The dir attribute can take one of two values, as you can see in the table that follows:

Value Meaning

ltr Left to right (the default value)

rtl Right to left (for languages such as Hebrew or Arabic that are read right to left)

Value	Meaning
ltr	Left to right (the default value)
rtl	Right to left (for languages such as Hebrew or Arabic that are read right to left)

EXAMPLE

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir="rtl">
<head>
<title>Display Directions</title>
</head>
<body>
This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.
</body>
</html>

Web Browser

This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.

When dir attribute is used within the <html> tag, it determines how text will be presented within the entire document. When used within another tag, it controls the text's direction for just the content of that tag.

The lang Attribute

The lang attribute allows you to indicate the main language used in a document, but this attribute was kept in HTML only for backwards compatibility with earlier versions of HTML. This attribute has been replaced by the xml:lang attribute in new XHTML documents.

The values of the lang attribute are ISO-639 standard two-character language codes. CheckHTML Language Codes: ISO 639 for a complete list of language codes.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>English Language Page</title>
</head>
<body>
This page is using English Language
</body>
</html>

The xml:lang Attribute

The xml:lang attribute is the XHTML replacement for the lang attribute. The value of thexml:lang attribute should be an ISO-639 country code as mentioned in previous section.

Generic Attributes

Here's a table of some other attributes that are readily usable with many of the HTML tags.

Attribute Options Function

align right, left, center Horizontally aligns tags

valign top, middle, bottom Vertically aligns tags within an HTML element.

bgcolor numeric, hexidecimal, RGB values Places a background color behind an element

background URL Places a background image behind an element

id User Defined Names an element for use with Cascading Style Sheets.

class User Defined Classifies an element for use with Cascading Style Sheets.

width Numeric Value Specifies the width of tables, images, or table cells.

height Numeric Value Specifies the height of tables, images, or table cells.

title User Defined "Pop-up" title of the elements.

We will see related examples as we will proceed to study other HTML tags. For a complete list of HTML Tags and related attributes please check reference to HTML Tags List.

Attribute	Options	Function
align	right, left, center	Horizontally aligns tags
valign	top, middle, bottom	Vertically aligns tags within an HTML element.
bgcolor	numeric, hexidecimal, RGB values	Places a background color behind an element
background	URL	Places a background image behind an element
id	User Defined	Names an element for use with Cascading Style Sheets.
class	User Defined	Classifies an element for use with Cascading Style Sheets.
width	Numeric Value	Specifies the width of tables, images, or table cells.
height	Numeric Value	Specifies the height of tables, images, or table cells.
title	User Defined	"Pop-up" title of the elements.

HTML5 Elements

HTML Elements

HTML elements are written with a start tag, with an end tag, with the content in between:

<tagname>content</tagname>

The HTML element is everything from the start tag to the end tag:

<p>My first paragraph.</p>

An HTML element is defined by a starting tag. If the element contains other content, it ends with a closing tag, where the element name is preceded by a forward slash as shown below with few tags:

Start Tag	Content	End Tag
<p>	This is paragraph content.	</p>
<h1>	This is heading content.	</h1>
<div>	This is division content.	</div>
<br />

So here <p>....</p> is an HTML element, <h1>...</h1> is another HTML element. There are some HTML elements which don't need to be closed, such as <img.../>, <hr /> and <br /> elements. These are known as void elements.

HTML documents consist of a tree of these elements and they specify how HTML documents should be built, and what kind of content should be placed in what part of an HTML document.

Nested HTML Elements

HTML elements can be nested (elements can contain elements).

All HTML documents consist of nested HTML elements.

This example contains 4 HTML elements:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<body>
  <h1>My First Heading</h1>
  <p>My first paragraph.</p>
</body>

</html>

Try it yourself »

Web Browser

My First Heading

My first paragraph.

Empty HTML Elements

HTML elements with no content are called empty elements.

<br> is an empty element without a closing tag (the <br> tag defines a line break).

Empty element can be "closed" in the opening tag like this: <br />.

HTML5 does not require empty elements to be closed. But if you need stricter validation, and make your document readable by XML parsers, please close all HTML elements.

HTML Tip: Use Lowercase Tags

HTML tags are not case sensitive: <P> means the same as <p>.

The HTML5 standard does not require lowercase tags, but W3C recommends lowercase in HTML4, and demandslowercase for stricter document types like XHTML.

HTML5 BasicTags

Heading Tags

Any document starts with a heading. You can use different sizes for your headings. HTML also has six levels of headings, which use the elements <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, and <h6>. While displaying any heading, browser adds one line before and one line after that heading.

HTML headings are defined with the <h1> to <h6> tags:

Example

<h1>This is heading</h1>
<h2>This is heading</h2>
<h3>This is heading</h3>

<h4>This is heading</h4>
<h5>This is heading</h5>
<h6>This is heading</h6>

Try it Yourself »

Web Browser

Paragraph Tag

The <p> tag offers a way to structure your text into different paragraphs. Each paragraph of text should go in between an opening <p> and a closing </p> tag as shown below in the example:

Example

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>

Try it Yourself »

Web browser

This is a paragraph.

This is another paragraph

Line Break Tag

Whenever you use the <br /> element, anything following it starts from the next line. This tag is an example of an empty element, where you do not need opening and closing tags, as there is nothing to go in between them.

The <br /> tag has a space between the characters br and the forward slash. If you omit this space, older browsers will have trouble rendering the line break, while if you miss the forward slash character and just use <br> it is not valid in XHTML

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Line Break  Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello<br />
Welcome To SS Creations.<br />
Thanks<br />
SS</p>
</body>
</html>

Try it Yourself »

Web Browser:

Hello
Welcome To SS Creations.
Thanks
SS

Centering Content

You can use <center> tag to put any content in the center of the page or any table cell.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Centring Content Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This text is not in the center.</p>
<center>
<p>This text is in the center.</p>
</center>
</body>
</html>

Web Browser

This text is not in the center.

This text is in the center.

Horizontal Lines

Horizontal lines are used to visually break up sections of a document. The <hr> tag creates a line from the current position in the document to the right margin and breaks the line accordingly.

For example you may want to give a line between two paragraphs as in the given example below:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Horizontal Line Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is paragraph one and should be on top</p>
<hr />
<p>This is paragraph two and should be at bottom</p>
</body>
</html>

Try it Yourself »

Web Browser

This is paragraph one and should be on top

This is paragraph two and should be at bottom

Again <hr /> tag is an example of the empty element, where you do not need opening and closing tags, as there is nothing to go in between them.

The <hr /> element has a space between the characters hr and the forward slash. If you omit this space, older browsers will have trouble rendering the horizontak line, while if you miss the forward slash character and just use <hr> it is not valid in XHTML

Preserve Formatting

Sometimes you want your text to follow the exact format of how it is written in the HTML document. In those cases, you can use the preformatted tag <pre>.

Any text between the opening <pre> tag and the closing </pre> tag will preserve the formatting of the source document.

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Preserve Formatting Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<pre>
function testFunction( strText ){
   alert (strText)
}
</pre>
</body>
</html>

Try it Yourself »

Web Browser

function testFunction( strText ){
   alert (strText)
}

Try using same code without keeping it inside <pre>...</pre> tags

Nonbreaking Spaces

Suppose you want to use the phrase "12 Angry Men." Here you would not want a browser to split the "12, Angry" and "Men" across two lines:

An example of this technique appears in the movie "12 Angry Men."

In cases where you do not want the client browser to break text, you should use a nonbreaking space entity   instead of a normal space. For example, when coding the "12 Angry Men" in a paragraph, you should use something similar to the following code:

Example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Nonbreaking Spaces Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>An example of this technique appears in the movie "12&nbsp;Angry&nbsp;Men."</p>
</body>
</html>

Try it Yourself »

Links

HTML links are defined with the <a> tag:

Example

<a href="http://www.sscreationtutorials.blogspot.in">This is a link</a>

Try it Yourself »

The link address is specified in the href attribute.

Images

HTML images are defined with the <img> tag.

The source file (src), alternative text (alt), and size (width and height) are provided as attributes:

Example

<img src="1.jpg" alt="SS creations" width="104" height="142">

Try it Yourself »

Wednesday, 8 October 2014

HTML5 Attributes

HTML Attributes

The href Attribute

Example

Size Attributes

Example

The alt Attribute

Example

The lang Attribute

Example

Core Attributes

The four core attributes that can be used on the majority of HTML elements (although not all) are: id title class style

The id Attribute

EXAMPLE

<p id="html">This para explains what is HTML</p> <p id="css">This para explains what is Cascading Style Sheet</p>

The title Attribute

EXAMPLE

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>The title Attribute Example</title> </head> <body> <h3 title="Hello HTML!">Titled Heading Tag Example</h3> </body> </html> This will produce following result:

Titled Heading Tag Example

Now try to bring your cursor over "Titled Heading Tag Example" and you will see that whatever title you used in your code is coming out as a tooltip of the cursor.

The class Attribute

The style Attribute

The style attribute allows you to specify Casecading Style Sheet (CSS) rules within the element.

Example

Internationalization Attributes

There are three internationalization attributes, which are available for most (although not all) XHTML elements. dir lang xml:lang

The dir Attribute

EXAMPLE

Example

Web Browser This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text. When dir attribute is used within the <html> tag, it determines how text will be presented within the entire document. When used within another tag, it controls the text's direction for just the content of that tag.

The lang Attribute

Example

The xml:lang Attribute

The xml:lang attribute is the XHTML replacement for the lang attribute. The value of thexml:lang attribute should be an ISO-639 country code as mentioned in previous section.

Generic Attributes

HTML5 Elements

HTML Elements

Nested HTML Elements

Example

Web Browser

My First Heading

Empty HTML Elements

HTML5 BasicTags

Heading Tags

HTML headings are defined with the <h1> to <h6> tags:

Example

<h1>This is heading</h1> <h2>This is heading</h2> <h3>This is heading</h3> <h4>This is heading</h4><h5>This is heading</h5><h6>This is heading</h6> Try it Yourself »

Paragraph Tag

Example

<p>This is a paragraph.</p> <p>This is another paragraph.</p> Try it Yourself »

Line Break Tag

Example

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Line Break Example</title> </head> <body> <p>Hello<br /> Welcome To SS Creations.<br /> Thanks<br /> SS</p> </body> </html> Try it Yourself » Web Browser:

Centering Content

Example

Horizontal Lines

Example

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Horizontal Line Example</title> </head> <body> <p>This is paragraph one and should be on top</p> <hr /> <p>This is paragraph two and should be at bottom</p> </body> </html> Try it Yourself »

Web Browser

Preserve Formatting

Example

Try it Yourself »

Nonbreaking Spaces

Example

Try it Yourself »

Links

Example

Images

Example

The four core attributes that can be used on the majority of HTML elements (although not all) are:

id

title

class

style

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>The title Attribute Example</title> </head> <body> <h3 title="Hello HTML!">Titled Heading Tag Example</h3> </body> </html>

This will produce following result:

There are three internationalization attributes, which are available for most (although not all) XHTML elements.

dir

lang

xml:lang

Web Browser

This is how IE 5 renders right-to-left directed text.

When dir attribute is used within the <html> tag, it determines how text will be presented within the entire document. When used within another tag, it controls the text's direction for just the content of that tag.

<h1>This is heading</h1>
<h2>This is heading</h2>
<h3>This is heading</h3>

<h4>This is heading</h4>
<h5>This is heading</h5>
<h6>This is heading</h6>

Try it Yourself »

<p>This is a paragraph.</p>
<p>This is another paragraph.</p>

Try it Yourself »

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Line Break Example</title> </head> <body> <p>Hello<br /> Welcome To SS Creations.<br /> Thanks<br /> SS</p> </body> </html>

Try it Yourself »

Web Browser:

<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Horizontal Line Example</title> </head> <body> <p>This is paragraph one and should be on top</p> <hr /> <p>This is paragraph two and should be at bottom</p> </body> </html>

Try it Yourself »