W3C Working Draft 09 August 2011

HTML5: Edition for Web Authors

W3C Working Draft 09 August 2011

This Version:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-author-20110809/

Latest Published Version:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-author/

Latest Editor's Draft:

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/

Editor:

Ian Hickson, Google, Inc.

This specification is available in the following formats: single page HTML, multipage HTML, full specification. This is revision 1.4938.

Copyright © 2011 W3C^® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.

The bulk of the text of this specification is also available in the WHATWG Web Applications 1.0 specification, under a license that permits reuse of the specification text.

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Abstract

This document is a strict subset of the full HTML5 specification that omits user-agent (UA) implementation details. It is targeted toward Web authors and others who are not UA implementors and who want a view of the HTML specification that focuses more precisely on details relevant to using the HTML language to create Web documents and Web applications. Because this document does not provide implementation conformance criteria, UA implementors should not rely on it, but should instead refer to the full HTML5 specification.

This document is an automated redaction of the full HTML5 specification. As such, the two documents are supposed to agree on normative matters concerning Web authors. However, if the documents disagree, this is a bug in the redaction process and the unredacted full HTML specification takes precedence. Readers are encouraged to report such discrepancies as bugs in the bug tracking system of the HTML Working Group.

Status of This document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

If you wish to make comments regarding this document in a manner that is tracked by the W3C, please submit them via using our public bug database. If you do not have an account then you can enter feedback using this form:

If you cannot do this then you can also e-mail feedback to public-html-comments@w3.org (subscribe, archives), and arrangements will be made to transpose the comments to our public bug database. Alternatively, you can e-mail feedback to whatwg@whatwg.org (subscribe, archives). The editor guarantees that all substantive feedback sent to this list will receive a reply. However, such feedback is not considered formal feedback for the W3C process. All feedback is welcome.

The working groups maintains a list of all bug reports that the editor has not yet tried to address and a list of issues for which the chairs have not yet declared a decision. The editor also maintains a list of all e-mails that he has not yet tried to address. These bugs, issues, and e-mails apply to multiple HTML-related specifications, not just this one.

Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification before it eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions.

The publication of this document by the W3C as a W3C First Public Working Draft does not imply that all of the participants in the W3C HTML working group endorse the contents of the specification. Indeed, for any section of the specification, one can usually find many members of the working group or of the W3C as a whole who object strongly to the current text, the existence of the section at all, or the idea that the working group should even spend time discussing the concept of that section.

A number of formal objections are open against this document:

• issue 31 (Adopt the REQUIREMENTS portion of the "Provide detailed instructions and examples for doing so to all readers of the HTML specification.")
• issue 41 (Don't provide an explicit means for others to define custom elements and attributes within HTML markup)
• issue 142 (The video poster is conceptually part of the media resource itself. Any short text alternative should apply to the resource as a whole, not just the poster image.)

The HTML Working Group chairs maintain a complete list of all current formal objections; that list may change as this document progresses.

There are also a number of open issues related to this document, for which working-group decisions still need to be made:

• issue 30 (longdesc)
• issue 133 (modal attribute)
• issue 134 (tab states)
• issue 150 (code-point verbosity)
• issue 151 (whatwg references)
• issue 153 (link-external)
• issue 154 (link-sidebar)
• issue 164 (no hgroup)
• issue 165 (rel-pingback)

The HTML Working Group chairs maintain a complete list of all currently open HTML Working Group issues; that list may change as this document progresses.

Activities are being pursued by some members of the HTML Working Group to provide new information related to this document, with the intent of reopening the following issues:

• issue 31 (Adopt the REQUIREMENTS portion of the "Provide detailed instructions and examples for doing so to all readers of the HTML specification.")
• issue 31 (The presence of <meta name=generator> makes missing alt conforming)
• issue 32 (Drop the summary="" attribute (in favor of the aria-describedby attribute)
• issue 80 (The presence of title makes missing alt conforming)
• issue 142 (The video poster is conceptually part of the media resource itself. Any short text alternative should apply to the resource as a whole, not just the poster image.)
• issue 155 (Enable all users to distinguish the cells of a table.)

The HTML Working Group chairs maintain a complete list of all HTML Working Group issues for which new information is known to be being pursued; that list may change as this document progresses.

A list of other potential accessibility related issues is also available.

W3C anticipates that there will be changes to this specification as a result of the resolution of Last Call issues. Per the usual W3C Process, any significant changes to the specification will trigger a subsequent Last Call.

The latest stable version of the editor's draft of the full HTML5 specification is always available on the W3C CVS server and in the WHATWG Subversion repository. The latest editor's working copy (which may contain unfinished text in the process of being prepared) contains the latest draft text of this specification (amongst others). For more details, please see the WHATWG FAQ.

There are various ways to follow the change history for the HTML specifications:

E-mail notifications of changes

HTML-Diffs mailing list (diff-marked HTML versions for each change): http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-diffs/latest

Commit-Watchers mailing list (complete source diffs): http://lists.whatwg.org/listinfo.cgi/commit-watchers-whatwg.org

Browsable version-control record of all changes:

CVSWeb interface with side-by-side diffs: http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/html5/

Annotated summary with unified diffs: http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker

Raw Subversion interface: svn checkout http://svn.whatwg.org/webapps/

The W3C HTML Working Group is the W3C working group responsible for this specification's progress along the W3C Recommendation track. This specification is the 07 July 2011 First Public Working Draft.

Work on this specification is also done at the WHATWG. The W3C HTML working group actively pursues convergence with the WHATWG, as required by the W3C HTML working group charter.

This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

Table of Contents

1. 1 Introduction
2. 2 Common infrastructure
3. 3 Semantics, structure, and APIs of HTML documents
4. 4 The elements of HTML
5. 5 Loading Web pages
6. 6 Web application APIs
7. 7 User interaction
8. 8 The HTML syntax
9. 9 The XHTML syntax
10. 10 Obsolete features
11. 11 IANA considerations
12. Index
13. Index of terms
14. References
15. Acknowledgements

Full table of contents

1. 1 Introduction
   1. 1.1 Background
   2. 1.2 Audience
   3. 1.3 Scope
   4. 1.4 History
   5. 1.5 Design notes
      1. 1.5.1 Serializability of script execution
      2. 1.5.2 Compliance with other specifications
   6. 1.6 HTML vs XHTML
   7. 1.7 Structure of this specification
      1. 1.7.1 How to read this specification
      2. 1.7.2 Typographic conventions
   8. 1.8 A quick introduction to HTML
   9. 1.9 Conformance requirements for authors
      1. 1.9.1 Presentational markup
      2. 1.9.2 Syntax errors
      3. 1.9.3 Restrictions on content models and on attribute values
   10. 1.10 Recommended reading
2. 2 Common infrastructure
   1. 2.1 Terminology
      1. 2.1.1 Resources
      2. 2.1.2 XML
      3. 2.1.3 DOM trees
      4. 2.1.4 Scripting
      5. 2.1.5 Plugins
      6. 2.1.6 Character encodings
   2. 2.2 Conformance requirements
      1. 2.2.1 Extensibility
   3. 2.3 Case-sensitivity and string comparison
   4. 2.4 Common microsyntaxes
      1. 2.4.1 Boolean attributes
      2. 2.4.2 Keywords and enumerated attributes
      3. 2.4.3 Numbers
         1. 2.4.3.1 Non-negative integers
         2. 2.4.3.2 Signed integers
         3. 2.4.3.3 Real numbers
         4. 2.4.3.4 Lists of integers
      4. 2.4.4 Dates and times
         1. 2.4.4.1 Months
         2. 2.4.4.2 Dates
         3. 2.4.4.3 Times
         4. 2.4.4.4 Local dates and times
         5. 2.4.4.5 Global dates and times
         6. 2.4.4.6 Weeks
         7. 2.4.4.7 Vaguer moments in time
      5. 2.4.5 Colors
      6. 2.4.6 Space-separated tokens
      7. 2.4.7 Comma-separated tokens
      8. 2.4.8 References
      9. 2.4.9 Media queries
   5. 2.5 URLs
      1. 2.5.1 Terminology
      2. 2.5.2 Resolving URLs
      3. 2.5.3 Interfaces for URL manipulation
   6. 2.6 Common DOM interfaces
      1. 2.6.1 Reflecting content attributes in IDL attributes
      2. 2.6.2 Collections
         1. 2.6.2.1 HTMLCollection
         2. 2.6.2.2 HTMLAllCollection
         3. 2.6.2.3 HTMLFormControlsCollection
         4. 2.6.2.4 HTMLOptionsCollection
      3. 2.6.3 DOMTokenList
      4. 2.6.4 DOMSettableTokenList
      5. 2.6.5 DOMStringMap
      6. 2.6.6 DOM feature strings
      7. 2.6.7 Exceptions
   7. 2.7 Namespaces
3. 3 Semantics, structure, and APIs of HTML documents
   1. 3.1 Documents
      1. 3.1.1 Documents in the DOM
      2. 3.1.2 Security
      3. 3.1.3 Resource metadata management
      4. 3.1.4 DOM tree accessors
      5. 3.1.5 Creating documents
   2. 3.2 Elements
      1. 3.2.1 Semantics
      2. 3.2.2 Elements in the DOM
      3. 3.2.3 Global attributes
         1. 3.2.3.1 The id attribute
         2. 3.2.3.2 The title attribute
         3. 3.2.3.3 The lang and xml:lang attributes
         4. 3.2.3.4 The xml:base attribute (XML only)
         5. 3.2.3.5 The dir attribute
         6. 3.2.3.6 The class attribute
         7. 3.2.3.7 The style attribute
         8. 3.2.3.8 Embedding custom non-visible data with the data-* attributes
      4. 3.2.4 Element definitions
         1. 3.2.4.1 Attributes
      5. 3.2.5 Content models
         1. 3.2.5.1 Kinds of content
            1. 3.2.5.1.1 Metadata content
            2. 3.2.5.1.2 Flow content
            3. 3.2.5.1.3 Sectioning content
            4. 3.2.5.1.4 Heading content
            5. 3.2.5.1.5 Phrasing content
            6. 3.2.5.1.6 Embedded content
            7. 3.2.5.1.7 Interactive content
         2. 3.2.5.2 Transparent content models
         3. 3.2.5.3 Paragraphs
      6. 3.2.6 Requirements relating to bidirectional-algorithm formatting characters
      7. 3.2.7 WAI-ARIA
   3. 3.3 APIs in HTML documents
   4. 3.4 Dynamic markup insertion
      1. 3.4.1 Opening the input stream
      2. 3.4.2 Closing the input stream
      3. 3.4.3 document.write()
      4. 3.4.4 document.writeln()
      5. 3.4.5 innerHTML
      6. 3.4.6 outerHTML
      7. 3.4.7 insertAdjacentHTML()
4. 4 The elements of HTML
   1. 4.1 The root element
      1. 4.1.1 The html element
   2. 4.2 Document metadata
      1. 4.2.1 The head element
      2. 4.2.2 The title element
      3. 4.2.3 The base element
      4. 4.2.4 The link element
      5. 4.2.5 The meta element
         1. 4.2.5.1 Standard metadata names
         2. 4.2.5.2 Other metadata names
         3. 4.2.5.3 Pragma directives
         4. 4.2.5.4 Other pragma directives
         5. 4.2.5.5 Specifying the document's character encoding
      6. 4.2.6 The style element
      7. 4.2.7 Styling
   3. 4.3 Scripting
      1. 4.3.1 The script element
         1. 4.3.1.1 Scripting languages
         2. 4.3.1.2 Restrictions for contents of script elements
         3. 4.3.1.3 Inline documentation for external scripts
      2. 4.3.2 The noscript element
   4. 4.4 Sections
      1. 4.4.1 The body element
      2. 4.4.2 The section element
      3. 4.4.3 The nav element
      4. 4.4.4 The article element
      5. 4.4.5 The aside element
      6. 4.4.6 The h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6 elements
      7. 4.4.7 The hgroup element
      8. 4.4.8 The header element
      9. 4.4.9 The footer element
      10. 4.4.10 The address element
      11. 4.4.11 Headings and sections
          1. 4.4.11.1 Creating an outline
   5. 4.5 Grouping content
      1. 4.5.1 The p element
      2. 4.5.2 The hr element
      3. 4.5.3 The pre element
      4. 4.5.4 The blockquote element
      5. 4.5.5 The ol element
      6. 4.5.6 The ul element
      7. 4.5.7 The li element
      8. 4.5.8 The dl element
      9. 4.5.9 The dt element
      10. 4.5.10 The dd element
      11. 4.5.11 The figure element
      12. 4.5.12 The figcaption element
      13. 4.5.13 The div element
   6. 4.6 Text-level semantics
      1. 4.6.1 The a element
      2. 4.6.2 The em element
      3. 4.6.3 The strong element
      4. 4.6.4 The small element
      5. 4.6.5 The s element
      6. 4.6.6 The cite element
      7. 4.6.7 The q element
      8. 4.6.8 The dfn element
      9. 4.6.9 The abbr element
      10. 4.6.10 The time element
      11. 4.6.11 The code element
      12. 4.6.12 The var element
      13. 4.6.13 The samp element
      14. 4.6.14 The kbd element
      15. 4.6.15 The sub and sup elements
      16. 4.6.16 The i element
      17. 4.6.17 The b element
      18. 4.6.18 The u element
      19. 4.6.19 The mark element
      20. 4.6.20 The ruby element
      21. 4.6.21 The rt element
      22. 4.6.22 The rp element
      23. 4.6.23 The bdi element
      24. 4.6.24 The bdo element
      25. 4.6.25 The span element
      26. 4.6.26 The br element
      27. 4.6.27 The wbr element
      28. 4.6.28 Usage summary
   7. 4.7 Edits
      1. 4.7.1 The ins element
      2. 4.7.2 The del element
      3. 4.7.3 Attributes common to ins and del elements
      4. 4.7.4 Edits and paragraphs
      5. 4.7.5 Edits and lists
   8. 4.8 Embedded content
      1. 4.8.1 The img element
         1. 4.8.1.1 Requirements for providing text to act as an alternative for images
            1. 4.8.1.1.1 General guidelines
            2. 4.8.1.1.2 A link or button containing nothing but the image
            3. 4.8.1.1.3 A phrase or paragraph with an alternative graphical representation: charts, diagrams, graphs, maps, illustrations
            4. 4.8.1.1.4 A short phrase or label with an alternative graphical representation: icons, logos
            5. 4.8.1.1.5 Text that has been rendered to a graphic for typographical effect
            6. 4.8.1.1.6 A graphical representation of some of the surrounding text
            7. 4.8.1.1.7 A purely decorative image that doesn't add any information
            8. 4.8.1.1.8 A group of images that form a single larger picture with no links
            9. 4.8.1.1.9 A group of images that form a single larger picture with links
            10. 4.8.1.1.10 A key part of the content
            11. 4.8.1.1.11 An image not intended for the user
      2. 4.8.2 The iframe element
      3. 4.8.3 The embed element
      4. 4.8.4 The object element
      5. 4.8.5 The param element
      6. 4.8.6 The video element
      7. 4.8.7 The audio element
      8. 4.8.8 The source element
      9. 4.8.9 The track element
      10. 4.8.10 Media elements
          1. 4.8.10.1 Error codes
          2. 4.8.10.2 Location of the media resource
          3. 4.8.10.3 MIME types
          4. 4.8.10.4 Network states
          5. 4.8.10.5 Loading the media resource
          6. 4.8.10.6 Offsets into the media resource
          7. 4.8.10.7 The ready states
          8. 4.8.10.8 Playing the media resource
          9. 4.8.10.9 Seeking
          10. 4.8.10.10 Media resources with multiple media tracks
              1. 4.8.10.10.1 TrackList objects
              2. 4.8.10.10.2 Selecting specific audio and video tracks declaratively
          11. 4.8.10.11 Synchronising multiple media elements
              1. 4.8.10.11.1 Introduction
              2. 4.8.10.11.2 Media controllers
              3. 4.8.10.11.3 Assigning a media controller declaratively
          12. 4.8.10.12 Timed text tracks
              1. 4.8.10.12.1 Text track model
              2. 4.8.10.12.2 Sourcing in-band text tracks
              3. 4.8.10.12.3 Text track API
          13. 4.8.10.13 User interface
          14. 4.8.10.14 Time ranges
          15. 4.8.10.15 Event summary
          16. 4.8.10.16 Best practices for authors using media elements
      11. 4.8.11 The canvas element
      12. 4.8.12 The map element
      13. 4.8.13 The area element
      14. 4.8.14 Image maps
      15. 4.8.15 MathML
      16. 4.8.16 SVG
      17. Серия сообщений "net www":
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          Часть 6 - HTML 5 - Edition for Web Authors
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