HTML5 Pocket Reference, 5th Edition

Chapter 1. HTML5 Pocket Reference

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the markup language used to turn text documents into web pages and applications. The fundamental purpose of HTML as a markup language is to provide a semantic description (the meaning) of the content and establish a document structure (a hierarchy of elements).

This pocket reference provides a concise yet thorough listing of the elements and attributes specified in the HTML5 Candidate Recommendation maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) dated December 17, 2012, the HTML 5.1 Editor’s Draft dated June 15, 2013, and the “living” HTML specification maintained by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) as of June 15, 2013.

Elements and attributes from the HTML 4.01 Specification that were made obsolete in HTML5 have been omitted from this edition. The elements and attributes contained in this book may be used in HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, or XHTML 1.1 documents, unless they are explicitly marked “Not in HTML 4.01,” in which case they will cause the document to be invalid.

HTML5 documents can be written in XHTML syntax (formally known as the “XML Serialization of HTML5”), so whenever applicable, special considerations for XHTML will be noted. See Appendix B at the end of this reference for details on XHTML syntax requirements.

This book is organized into the following sections:

• HTML5 Overview

• HTML5 Global Attributes

• Alphabetical List of Elements

• Elements Organized by Function

• Appendix A

• Appendix B ...