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5 HTML elements you probably never use (but perhaps should)

seomoz.org — This is a collection of HTML elements I've found to be very under-represented in markup on the web today.

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 17, 2006

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  • spect3r, on 10/12/2007, -3/+90Then why did you click it? Why are you even in the "technology/design" section to begin with.

    Digg isn't just all youtube and flash game links you know.
  • wordsofwisedumb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+63The above comment by nreynolds is a posting I've found to be very boring on digg on the web today.
  • ActiveMatx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+55Wow, good article. Not only did I not know these elements existed, but I have never seen a lot of them even implemented!
  • surfing, on 10/12/2007, -2/+40On your MySpace website.
  • Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -6/+35Dupe. These are all from http://www.w3.org
  • Oatmeal, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28blink tag ftw

    marquee too.
  • myheaditches, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21Best user style sheet ever:
    body{text-decoration:blink;}
  • webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19One of the greatest dupe-calls I've heard. :D
  • kofspades, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16You must be fun at parties. :)
  • psyon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16You can always style the ABBR tag to not underline it. With reguards to optgroup, I have found that users love it when there are large option lists.
  • Scourge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Did a few cars hit you in the head on your trip to the spell check?
  • atmofunk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15...plus without optgroup you have to write extra code to handle the occasion when someone accidentally selects what is *supposed* to be a group header. OPTGROUP is def an elegant way around this.
  • iAlex, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Very useful! Thanks!
  • schnitzi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15 <q> Note: Apparently this little gem doesn't work in IE.

    That's fun. Now you can put things on your web pages like "IE is a <q>web browser<q/>" and IE users won't know you're actually making fun of them.
  • mkwng, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15must...know...which...tags...you...find...useful...
  • headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12I don't agree in regards to the optgroup tags. All the time I see "hacks" being used where this tag would work perfectly. Hacks that look like:

    -- Animals --
    Cat
    Dog
    -- Fish --
    Carp
    Shark

    If the acronym tag can be styled, and I'm sure it can, then change it so it's not underlined.
  • headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I've seen the fieldset and legend tags being used more and more, but I've never heard of the other ones.

    The quotes tag is the coolest of the group, and of course(!) IE doesn't support it.
  • directandy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14those are awesome. definate digg.
  • Continuum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12The inventor of the blink tag, Lou Montulli, has said repeatedly in interviews that he considers "the blink tag to be the worst thing I've ever done for the Internet".

    Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_tag

  • marillion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12They didn't include the LABEL tag. One of my pet peeves for a long time was that in most applications, you can check a radio button or check box by clicking of the label. This facilitates Fits' Law by giving a larger target. The HTML label tag is how it's done on the web.
  • zigamorph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I actually found this article very interesting. I learned that there is a "q" tag and it is used to quote text. I would have never known that if I didn't read this. Also the use of everything else gave me some insight in to some tags I am going to be using in the future.
  • 4to15characters, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11none of these are THAT useful, but now that i've said that, i will probably end up finding a way to use them :P

    nice find
    digg from me :D
  • headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Not a very good web developer if you didn't realized your tags would be stripped out from your input. Also not a good web developer if you don't understand the importance of web semantics.
  • crawf061, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"The internet, or 'interweb', is full of bitchin content, said Matt, If I were to surf the interweb I'd totally do it nekkid"

    Nice example of the quote tag
  • Goner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I think Jakob would have a field day telling you to never speak for him again...
  • JSchwage, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10To be honest, I hadn't heard of any of these tags before. And that's saying a lot, seeing as I'm in the web design business.

    dugg
  • addicted68098, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11I feel specail, I use 3/5 of them, I didn't know that fieldset was an odd element, you see it used all the time.
  • i440, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The "marquee" tag is not present!

    A truly serious ommission, I would have to say.
  • Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Wow, you're right - never used these tags before. Great examples as well. good job. Digg++.
  • psyon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I take it your tags go filtered out :(
  • chadu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7you could probably style the acronym tag to not have an underline.

    text-decoration:none; should work.
  • christopher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"[...]And that's saying a lot, seeing as I'm in the web design business."

    Well, unfortunately - and this is not aimed at you at all, JSchwage - that's not really saying that much. I am constantly surprised by the lack of knowledge and comfort with web related technologies I see in people in "the web design business." Unless they were entirely on the design side but then i would not expect them to need to know any of it.
  • Markie1006, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Now I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Urusal was being funny ;)
  • WiskyDrinker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I can tell you're a web designer and not a web developer. Before you make a comment like that, you should please understand what you're talking about.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Not bad, not bad...may have to use some of these in the future.
  • alej744, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I don't think spell check could catch half of those "mistakes".

    I think it's just dumbass-chonga-speak.
  • kimos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Yeah, digg for being the top five of something and still being awesome. Digg also for making a bold statment as the title and actually following through!
  • bmson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5There is more to websites and html, than the layout.

    You should your address for address strong for bold text and h1 for headlines, tables for table-content, p and span for text and div for template.
  • poipoipoi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Can't wait til they implement the [make it look how i want] tag.
  • noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5great article, but i've used them all except for the q tag.
    but then again, i only knew about them because i did a full scan of the w3c specs.
  • kingace, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The address tag, I mean. Digg cut it off.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4they've been used infrequently for all of the web's existence, yet browsers still handle them fine. why would developers choose to remove them later? there's no advantage, and definite disadvantage.
  • Lifestory, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4oh my god.. i actually understood what you were saying..
  • cyclomedia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4the BR tag is legal for line breaks where line breaks are normally found, but not for layout (bumping things down the page) or paragraph breaks... Addresses and Haiku Poems, for example, both have line breaks as part of their structure, and so need BR tags
  • DCstewieG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Why don't you check instead of asking?
    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seomoz.org%2Fblogdetail.php%3FID%3D1282
  • LucasVB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Sweet, I knew of all of those mentioned in the article!
    Here's a nice index of HTML elements. Be sure to take a look at all those you don't know: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/index/elements.html

    @kevinfoster: Yeah, the button tag is not used enough. You can make nice stylized buttons using it, but most people rely on lame javascript codes for this. It's a shame, since it's a very versatile tag
  • takeda, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I think fieldset is more popular because XHTML requires it in (at least the w3c validator screams when it's absent)
  • headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Semantics!
  • headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Why not wrap each row in a span and set the display:block? That would at least provide some kind of semantic value"

    How is that semantic? The idea behind semantics is giving all the 1's & 0's on the web *meaning*. A span tag has no meaning, and says nothing about the information contained within.

    An address tag on the other hand makes it very clear that the information contained within the tags is an *address* of some sort.

    I think you're confused.
  • strcmp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The point is that you can style these elements just as you could a DIV while retaining as much semantic information as possible.
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