Is there a way to have blank HTML tags or in other words, tags that do nothing? For example <p> turns the inclosed text into a paragraph, <b> turns the text bold, <div> creates a box. I'm looking for a tag that has no effect on the text or it's environment. I want this so that I can customise it myself with css or js.
I am <x class="FancyText">king</x> of the world.
There are no “blank HTML tags”. What come closest are span and div, but the latter causes line breaks before and after (block rendering) by default and cannot be used in inline context, and the former does not allow any block-level elements inside it.
In practice, you can use a made-up element, like <foo>...</foo>, though with some problems on older versions of IE. This is widely regarded as a bad move, though; using span or div, as appropriate, with a class attribute is recommeded.
Consider explaining what you are really trying to achieve, instead of referring to fictional HTML tags expected to do nothing.
For this you'd use either the div or span element. From the HTML5 editor's draft:
The div element has no special meaning at all. It represents its children.
The span element doesn't mean anything on its own. ... It represents its children.
The difference between them is that the div element should be used where flow content is expected (that is to say, sections on a page), whereas the span element should be used where phrasing content is expected (within text).
In the example you've given, you'd want to use the span element:
I am <span class="FancyText">king</span> of the world.
You can do the following:
<div></div>
This will do nothing unless you add a class or id.
Or,
<span>Some text</span>
This will do nothing unless you add a class or id.
if you want to use <x ...> txt </x> as a place holder,
than any officially-unused set of chars will do fine.
I use <a> ... </a> for that
Related
This is what the Mozilla documentation say about the i markup :
The HTML Idiomatic Text element (i) represents a range of text that
is set off from the normal text for some reason, such as idiomatic
text, technical terms, taxonomical designations, among others.
And about the span markup :
The HTML span element is a generic inline container for phrasing
content, which does not inherently represent anything.
What I understand is both are for differentiating bits of text inside larger paragraph. What am I missing ?
i has a meaning, span doesn't. A span merely allows you to put a span of text into its own separate container element. By default that means nothing, but you can ascribe any meaning to it you want. Typically you'd give that span a class and apply some specific style to that class.
i's existing meaning you have described in your post. Screen readers for example might apply a different emphasis to idiomatic expressions than for standard text, and it's already styled italic by default.
In html there is a paradigm of semantics of html tags (https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/semantic-html5-elements/).
span is a general container without any meaning for text blocks. The same as div for blocks.
But i has a semantic meaning.
There are theoretical differences, but there's one massive practical difference. The i markup means the contained text displays in italics in the browser, span does nothing on its own except, as you say, 'differentiate bits of text':
<p>With <i>: <i>Hello World</i></p>
<p>With <span>: <span>Hello World</span></p>
span is a generic container. It is more like div. But div is a block-level container where span is an inline container.
Use the <i> element only when there is not a more appropriate semantic element, such as:
<em> (emphasized text)
<strong> (important text)
<mark> (marked/highlighted text)
<cite> (the title of a work)
<dfn> (a definition term)
Please see the reference1 or referance2.
Sometimes I want to put a wrapper element around several other HTML elements with the sole purpose of setting up a convenient CSS selector to refer to all the contained elements:
<TAG id="just-a-handy-wrapper">
<abc ...>
...
</abc>
...
<pqr ...>
...
</pqr>
</TAG>
...and in the CSS:
#just-a-handy wrapper * {
...
}
I find this easier to manage and maintain than the alternative of assigning a common class to all the items captured by the #just-a-handy wrapper * selector above.
In this example, I've used fictitious tags <abc>, ..., <pqr>, etc., for the contained elements to stress the fact that I'm looking for a solution that works irrespective of the nature of the specific tags among the contents.
I've also used the fictitious tag TAG as a placeholder for the desired "wrapper tag", because my question is precisely about the best HTML tag to use for this purpose. By "best" I mean most "universal" in the types of elements it can contain in valid HTML5, and "most layout-neutral".
IOW, the ideal HTML tag would the one where the page including the code above would always be rendered exactly the same as one where the <tag ...> and </tag> lines were removed, or commented out:
<!-- <tag id="just-a-handy-wrapper"> -->
<div ...>
...
</div>
...
<div ...>
...
</div>
<!-- </tag> -->
A div, for example, is not "layout-neutral" (the browser will generally have strong ideas about how to layout a div), therefore it would not do to set tag equal to div. Here's a simple example of this:
original
with <div> wrapper around two of the three blue
rectangles
Yes, there is a CSS for that supported by major browsers
display: contents
E.g.
<section class="container"><div>Parent is virtually not rendered</div></section>
.container {
display: contents;
}
Sorry, I fear there is no such tag.
Imaginge a scenario where your <abc> or <pqr> tags are block-level tags, say <p> tags. In order to fullfill your requirement (the layout should be the same, if the tag is there or not), the container tag would need to be a blocklevel tag to be w3c conform, and it should not have any default stylings. As far as I know, a <div> is exaclty that.
Now imaginge a scenario where your<abc> or <pqr> are inline tags like <i> or <b>. In order to fullfill your requirement the container tag would need to be a inline tag itself, otherwise it would break the line.
Now the thing is it is not possible for a tag to be inline- and block-level at the same time.
And to answer your question about the most universal tags:
Use div as a container for block-level contents and use span as a container for inline contents. These tags are made for this purpose.
From the w3c Visual Formatting Model document:
Boxes in the normal flow belong to a formatting context, which may be block or inline, but not both simultaneously
In your fiddles, the lack of layout neutrality is demonstrated by the text-align: center; rule on the .outer element no longer applying to the .inner elements, once there was a wrapper element layered between them.
I know that you'd prefer to speak in generalities to stress your point about a layout neutral tag, but since all HTML elements must have a formatting context, there will always be a side-effect to adding more tags to the markup. (In this case, your <div> tag is a block.)
Most often there's no visual issue, but insofar as your layout depends on formatting contexts, adding more elements will always run counter to you having a layout-neutral tag.
I would echo #Mario A's answer that where you need to wrap a tag with something layout neutral, wrap block tags with <div>s, and inline tags, with spans, so as not to introduce new formatting contexts that could disrupt your layout.
<span> is layout neutral but it depends on which types of elements go within in, for example it cannot contain block elements like <div>. Whether an element renders as a block depends on the element, but can be specifying, for example <div style="display:inline-block"> or <div style="display:table-cell"> display differently.
Since it's a CSS question, you can use IDs on your elements to add extra CSS rules, or apply several different classes to one ID. EG
<div id="mydiv" class="blacktext">helloo</div>
<div class="blacktext class2">hello</div> <!-- apply class blacktext and class2-->
CSS
.class2 { background-color: #FF0000;}
References
[1] the <span> tag
The tag is used to group inline-elements in a document.
The tag provides no visual change by itself.
The tag provides a way to add a hook to a part of a text or a part of a document.
[2] span vs div
Answer on stackoverflow about inline-block, block and inline with <span> and ` compared
There isn't such a tag, and there very well should be one.
Some tags like fieldset have behavior that affect child elements, but also do not require having any rendering. fieldset, when disabled, will disable all children input elements and is incredibly useful. However, you cannot wrap it around a <tr> specifically because it needs to be rendered.
I think the slot tag can be a good candidate for your requirements.
I need value "1" to be displayed adjacent to "Id" field but its displaying in a new line.The tag is supposed to be inline not sure why its being moved to new line.
jsfiddle
HTML
<b>Id : <p id="productid">1</p></b>
A <p> element is a paragraph, which by default is a block element.
In this case, you can't use <p> because:
It is not allowed inside <b> elements (because <p> can only be used where flow content is expected, but the content model of <b> is phrasing content). Always remember to validate your code.
Semantically, it's clear that it isn't a paragraph.
I suggest using
<b>Id: <span id="productid">1</span></b>
Demo
#productid{
display:inline-block;
}
p is a block level element by default. You can set it to display inline-block to make it do as you describe using basic css.
I'm not sure if you are unable to access css, so in case you cannot, see oriol's answer. No reason not to just make it a span.
Bit of a side note, it is a little odd to put a p tag inside a b tag. Technically you CAN do this, but it looks like using a span tag is the more proper way to handle this.
Is it syntactically and semantically correct to nest <div> or any other block level element inside the <p> tag. I am talking about HTML4 Transitional DTD.
If not then is it OK to instead use <span style="display: block"> instead?
Syntactically, a div inside a p is invalid in all standards of HTML. Moreover, when using a conforming HTML parser, it is impossible to place a <div> element inside a <p> in the DOM because the opening <div> tag will automatically close the <p> element.
Semantically, the correct choice depends on the content that you are marking up. You will need to show at least a sample full paragraph and possibly the content surrounding it to be sure of providing sufficient information for the correct semantic mark-up to be determined.
However, given that both <div> and <span> are semantics free, and that CSS in no way can ever change that, if you are certain that the contents of the <p> tag truly form a paragraph, and that <span style="display: block"> gets you the presentational effect that you are seeking, then that is valid HTML and would be a wholly appropriate solution.
No, a paragraph element may not contain other block elements.
Reference
A paragraph tag is intended for a block of text. If your elements is a part of the text (and not block elements), it would be semantically correct, otherwise not. A span tag with display:block is still a block element.
It is syntactically incorrect, as you can see for yourself using the W3C markup validator.
Semantically and practically I would say it's "ok" in the sense that a) it is very natural, b) all browsers handle it correctly (indeed this is one of the easiest problems they have to face daily).
If your HTML is produced by user input (e.g. an HTML editor widget using which visitors can leave comments) then I 'd say simply let it be, even if it is "incorrect".
Otherwise, you could change the markup a bit. Personally I would go with
<div class="para">
<div>Some content</div>
</div>
and give .para appropriate margins with CSS.
FWIW: I had a paragraph bracketed by paragraph tags. Inside that I put a div with display:inline on the div. But it still treated the div as a block element and closed the paragraph, creating a new line with a paragraph spacing.
It appears that any block element inside paragraph tags forces the paragraph to close even if the block element is being displayed as inline in its CSS.
Without any context, it seems fine to me, so long as your outer tag really is still a paragraph. If your div is something like your top nav bar, then not so much, but if it's a container for an image and caption that you're going to float off to the right, then there's no problem.
can we have content text directly in <div>text content</div> or it should be like <div><p>text content</p></div>? according to web standards.
You can have character data directly inside a div element. If (and only if) that character data is a paragraph, then it should also be marked up as a paragraph (as per your second example). If you only have one paragraph of content inside the div, then you should usually avoid having the div element as it serves no purpose.
You can have it directly in a div. The div is often used to group block-elements to format them with styles, but normal, unmarkedup text in a div is just fine.
There's a two questions implied here, can and should. can is straight-forward, should is not.
So, Can you nest content text directly into a div?
The current active spec states The div element has no special meaning **at all**. So, yes there is no reason why you cannot nest text directly into a div, but that text has no special meaning.
Should you nest content text directly into a div?
No, not really. There is one fundamental problem with putting text into an element that has no special meaning. What does that text mean? Is it a title or a simple block of text, etc. For most people this isn't an issue. If you're using a screen reader it is. The screen reader needs more information to understand the context of the text. This is why the HTML spec on div now includes the following text:
Note Authors are strongly encouraged to view the div element as an element of last resort, for when no other element is suitable. Use of
more appropriate elements instead of the div element leads to better
accessibility for readers and easier maintainability for authors.
so ideally all your text should be nested into a HTML element that represents it's context, e.g. <p>, <h1>, etc.
Yes, you can directly add content text into a div tag, although using p tags would be preferable in most circumstances.
Screen readers seem to handle <div>phrasing content</div> and <div><p>phrasing content</p></div>
differently in some circumstances.
It seems that the rules for elements that can contain flow content and elements that can contain phrasing content are different.
The standards are not so well defined. I would choose your second example, because it is more structurally sound, and therefore more semantic.