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W3C
REC-html40-971218

HTML 4.0 Specification

W3C Recommendation 18-Dec-1997

This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218
Latest version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40
Previous version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/PR-html40-971107
Editors:
Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>
Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@w3.org>
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>

Abstract

This specification defines the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), version 4.0, the publishing language of the World Wide Web. In addition to the text, multimedia, and hyperlink features of the previous versions of HTML, HTML 4.0 supports more multimedia options, scripting languages, style sheets, better printing facilities, and documents that are more accessible to users with disabilities. HTML 4.0 also takes great strides towards the internationalization of documents, with the goal of making the Web truly World Wide.

HTML 4.0 is an SGML application conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 -- Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO8879].

Status of this document

This document has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties and has been endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web.

W3C recommends that user agents and authors (and in particular, authoring tools) produce HTML 4.0 documents rather than HTML 3.2 documents (see [HTML32]). For reasons of backwards compatibility, W3C also recommends that tools interpreting HTML 4.0 continue to support HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0 as well.

A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.

Public discussion on HTML features takes place on www-html@w3.org.

Available formats

The HTML 4.0 W3C Recommendation is also available in the following formats:

A plain text file:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/html40.txt (723Kb),
A gzip'ed tar file containing HTML documents:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/html40.tgz (339Kb),
A zip file containing HTML documents (this is a '.zip' file not an '.exe'):
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/html40.zip (372Kb),
A Postscript file:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/html40.ps (4.4Mb, 363 pages),
A PDF file:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/html40.pdf (2.1Mb) file.

In case of a discrepancy between electronic and printed forms of the specification, the electronic version is the definitive version.

Available languages

The English version of this specification is the only normative version. However, for translations of this document, see http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html40-updates/translations.html.

Errata

The list of known errors in this specification is available at http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html40-updates/html40-errata.html

Please report errors in this document to www-html-editor@w3.org.

Table of Contents

About the HTML 4.0 Specification
How the specification is organized Document conventions
Elements and attributes Notes and examples
Acknowledgments Copyright Notice
Introduction to HTML 4.0
What is the World Wide Web?
Introduction to URIs Fragment identifiers Relative URIs
What is HTML?
A brief history of HTML
HTML 4.0
Internationalization Accessibility Tables Compound documents Style sheets Scripting Printing
Authoring documents with HTML 4.0
Separate structure and presentation Consider universal accessibility to the Web Help user agents with incremental rendering
On SGML and HTML
Introduction to SGML SGML constructs used in HTML
Elements Attributes Character references Comments
How to read the HTML DTD
DTD Comments Parameter entity definitions Element declarations
Content model definitions
Attribute declarations
DTD entities in attribute definitions Boolean attributes
Conformance: requirements and recommendations
Definitions SGML The text/html content type
HTML Document Representation - Character sets, character encodings, and entities
The Document Character Set Character encodings
Choosing an encoding
Notes on specific encodings
Specifying the character encoding
Character references
Numeric character references Character entity references
Undisplayable characters
Basic HTML data types - Character data, colors, lengths, URIs, content types, etc.
Case information SGML basic types Text strings URIs Colors
Notes on using colors
Lengths Content types (MIME types) Language codes Character encodings Single characters Dates and times Link types Media descriptors Script data Style sheet data Frame target names
The global structure of an HTML document - The HEAD and BODY of a document
Introduction to the structure of an HTML document HTML version information The HTML element The document head
HEAD element The TITLE element The title attribute Meta data
Specifying meta data The META element Meta data profiles
The document body
The BODY element Element identifiers: the id and class attributes Block-level and inline elements Grouping elements: the DIV and SPAN elements Headings: The H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 elements The ADDRESS element
Language information and text direction - International considerations for text
Specifying the language of content: the lang attribute
Language codes Inheritance of language codes Interpretation of language codes
Specifying the direction of text and tables: the dir attribute
Introduction to the bidirectional algorithm Inheritance of text direction information Setting the direction of embedded text Overriding the bidirectional algorithm: the BDO element Character references for directionality and joining control The effect of style sheets on bidirectionality
Text - Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases
White space Structured text
Phrase elements: EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, ABBR, and ACRONYM Quotations: The BLOCKQUOTE and Q elements
Rendering quotations
Subscripts and superscripts: the SUB and SUP elements
Lines and Paragraphs
Paragraphs: the P element Controlling line breaks
Forcing a line break: the BR element Prohibiting a line break
Hyphenation Preformatted text: The PRE element Visual rendering of paragraphs
Marking document changes: The INS and DEL elements
Lists - Unordered, Ordered, and Definition Lists
Introduction to lists Unordered lists (UL), ordered lists (OL), and list items (LI) Definition lists: the DL, DT, and DD elements
Visual rendering of lists
The DIR and MENU elements
Tables
Introduction to tables Elements for constructing tables
The TABLE element
Table directionality
Table Captions: The CAPTION element Row groups: the THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY elements Column groups: the COLGROUP and COL elements
The COLGROUP element The COL element Calculating the number of columns in a table Calculating the width of columns
Table rows: The TR element Table cells: The TH and TD elements
Cells that span several rows or columns
Table formatting by visual user agents
Borders and rules Horizontal and vertical alignment
Inheritance of alignment specifications
Cell margins
Table rendering by non-visual user agents
Associating header information with data cells Categorizing cells Algorithm to find heading information
Sample table
Links - Hypertext and Media-Independent Links
Introduction to links and anchors
Visiting a linked resource Other link relationships Specifying anchors and links Link titles Internationalization and links
The A element
Syntax of anchor names Nested links are illegal Anchors with the id attribute Unavailable and unidentifiable resources
Document relationships: the LINK element
Forward and reverse links Links and external style sheets Links and search engines
Path information: the BASE element
Resolving relative URIs
Objects, Images, and Applets
Introduction to objects, images, and applets Including an image: the IMG element Generic inclusion: the OBJECT element
Rules for rendering objects Object initialization: the PARAM element Global naming schemes for objects Object declarations and instantiations
Including an applet: the APPLET element Notes on embedded documents Image maps
Client-side image maps: the MAP and AREA elements
Client-side image map examples
Server-side image maps
Visual presentation of images, objects, and applets
Width and height White space around images and objects Borders Alignment
How to specify alternate text
Style Sheets - Adding style to HTML documents
Introduction to style sheets Adding style to HTML
Setting the default style sheet language Inline style information Header style information: the STYLE element Media types
External style sheets
Preferred and alternate style sheets Specifying external style sheets
Cascading style sheets
Media-dependent cascades Inheritance and cascading
Hiding style data from user agents Linking to style sheets with HTTP headers
Alignment, font styles, and horizontal rules
Formatting
Background color Alignment Floating objects
Float an object Float text around an object
Fonts
Font style elements: the TT, I, B, BIG, SMALL, STRIKE, S, and U elements Font modifier elements: FONT and BASEFONT
Rules: the HR element
Frames - Multi-view presentation of documents
Introduction to frames Layout of frames
The FRAMESET element
Rows and columns Nested frame sets Sharing data among frames
The FRAME element
Setting the initial contents of a frame Visual rendering of a frame
Specifying target frame information
Setting the default target for links Target semantics
Alternate content
The NOFRAMES element Long descriptions of frames
Inline frames: the IFRAME element
Forms - User-input Forms: Text Fields, Buttons, Menus, and more
Introduction to forms Controls
Control types
The FORM element The INPUT element
Control types created with INPUT Examples of forms containing INPUT controls
The BUTTON element The SELECT, OPTGROUP, and OPTION elements
Preselected options
The TEXTAREA element The ISINDEX element Labels
The LABEL element
Adding structure to forms: the FIELDSET and LEGEND elements Giving focus to an element
Tabbing navigation Access keys
Disabled and read-only controls
Disabled controls Read-only controls
Form submission
Form submission method Successful controls Processing form data
Step one: Identify the successful controls Step two: Build a form data set Step three: Encode the form data set Step four: Submit the encoded form data set
Form content types
application/x-www-form-urlencoded multipart/form-data
Scripts - Animated Documents and Smart Forms
Introduction to scripts Designing documents for user agents that support scripting
The SCRIPT element Specifying the scripting language
The default scripting language Local declaration of a scripting language References to HTML elements from a script
Intrinsic events Dynamic modification of documents
Designing documents for user agents that don't support scripting
The NOSCRIPT element Hiding script data from user agents
SGML reference information for HTML - Formal definition of HTML and validation
document Document Validation Sample SGML catalog
SGML Declaration of HTML 4.0
SGML Declaration
Document Type Definition Transitional Document Type Definition Frameset Document Type Definition Character entity references in HTML 4.0
Introduction to character entity references Character entity references for ISO 8859-1 characters
The list of characters
Character entity references for symbols, mathematical symbols, and Greek letters
The list of characters
Character entity references for markup-significant and internationalization characters
The list of characters
Changes between HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.0
Changes to elements
New elements Deprecated elements Obsolete elements
Changes to attributes Changes for accessibility Changes for meta data Changes for text Changes for links Changes for tables Changes for images, objects, and image maps Changes for forms Changes for style sheets Changes for frames Changes for scripting Changes for internationalization
Performance, Implementation, and Design Notes
Notes on invalid documents Special characters in URI attribute values
Non-ASCII characters in URI attribute values Ampersands in URI attribute values
SGML implementation notes
Line breaks Specifying non-HTML data
Element content Attribute values
SGML features with limited support Boolean attributes Marked Sections Processing Instructions Shorthand markup
Notes on helping search engines index your Web site
Search robots
The robots.txt file Robots and the META element
Notes on tables
Design rationale
Dynamic reformatting Incremental display Structure and presentation Row and column groups Accessibility
Recommended Layout Algorithms
Fixed Layout Algorithm Autolayout Algorithm
Notes on forms
Incremental display Future projects
Notes on scripting
Reserved syntax for future script macros
Current Practice for Script Macros
Notes on frames Notes on accessibility Notes on security
Security issues for forms
References
Normative references Informative references
Index of Elements Index of Attributes Index

Copyright  ©  1997 W3C (MIT, INRIA, Keio ), All Rights Reserved.

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