This specification is available in the following formats: single page HTML, multipage HTML, web developer edition. This is revision $Revision: 1.4318 $.
Copyright © 2010 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.
This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.
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 most recently formally published 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, please send them to public-html-comments@w3.org (subscribe, archives) or whatwg@whatwg.org (subscribe, archives), or submit them using our public bug database. 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 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.
The latest stable version of the editor's draft of this 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:
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 3 September 2010 Editor's 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.
a elementem elementstrong elementsmall elementcite elementq elementdfn elementabbr elementtime elementcode elementvar elementsamp elementkbd elementsub and sup elementsi elementb elementmark elementruby elementrt elementrp elementbdo elementspan elementbr elementwbr elementimg element
iframe elementembed elementobject elementparam elementvideo elementaudio elementsource elementcanvas element
map elementarea elementtable elementcaption elementcolgroup elementcol elementtbody elementthead elementtfoot elementtr elementtd elementth elementtd and th elementsform elementfieldset elementlegend elementlabel elementinput element
type attribute
input element attributes
autocomplete attributelist attributereadonly attributesize attributerequired attributemultiple attributemaxlength attributepattern attributemin and max attributesstep attributeplaceholder attributeinput element APIsbutton elementselect elementdatalist elementoptgroup elementoption elementtextarea elementkeygen elementoutput elementprogress elementmeter elementdetails elementsummary elementcommand elementmenu element
a element to define a commandbutton element to define a commandinput element to define a commandoption element to define a commandcommand element to define
a commandaccesskey attribute on a label element to define a commandaccesskey attribute on a legend element to define a commandaccesskey attribute to define a command on other elementsa and area elementsalternate"archives"author"bookmark"external"help"icon"license"nofollow"noreferrer"pingback"prefetch"search"stylesheet"sidebar"tag"Window object
hidden attributeaccesskey attributecontenteditable attribute
button elementdetails elementinput element as a text entry widgetinput element as domain-specific widgetsinput element as a range controlinput element as a color wellinput element as a check box and radio button widgetsinput element as a file upload controlinput element as a buttonmarquee elementmeter elementprogress elementselect elementtextarea elementkeygen elementtime elementStatus: Last call for comments
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This section is non-normative.
The World Wide Web's markup language has always been HTML. HTML was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years have enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents.
The main area that has not been adequately addressed by HTML is a vague subject referred to as Web Applications. This specification attempts to rectify this, while at the same time updating the HTML specifications to address issues raised in the past few years.
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
This specification is intended for authors of documents and scripts that use the features defined in this specification, implementors of tools that operate on pages that use the features defined in this specification, and individuals wishing to establish the correctness of documents or implementations with respect to the requirements of this specification.
This document is probably not suited to readers who do not already have at least a passing familiarity with Web technologies, as in places it sacrifices clarity for precision, and brevity for completeness. More approachable tutorials and authoring guides can provide a gentler introduction to the topic.
In particular, familiarity with the basics of DOM Core and DOM Events is necessary for a complete understanding of some of the more technical parts of this specification. An understanding of Web IDL, HTTP, XML, Unicode, character encodings, JavaScript, and CSS will also be helpful in places but is not essential.
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
This specification is limited to providing a semantic-level markup language and associated semantic-level scripting APIs for authoring accessible pages on the Web ranging from static documents to dynamic applications.
The scope of this specification does not include providing mechanisms for media-specific customization of presentation (although default rendering rules for Web browsers are included at the end of this specification, and several mechanisms for hooking into CSS are provided as part of the language).
The scope of this specification is not to describe an entire operating system. In particular, hardware configuration software, image manipulation tools, and applications that users would be expected to use with high-end workstations on a daily basis are out of scope. In terms of applications, this specification is targeted specifically at applications that would be expected to be used by users on an occasional basis, or regularly but from disparate locations, with low CPU requirements. For instance online purchasing systems, searching systems, games (especially multiplayer online games), public telephone books or address books, communications software (e-mail clients, instant messaging clients, discussion software), document editing software, etc.
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
For its first five years (1990-1995), HTML went through a number of revisions and experienced a number of extensions, primarily hosted first at CERN, and then at the IETF.
With the creation of the W3C, HTML's development changed venue again. A first abortive attempt at extending HTML in 1995 known as HTML 3.0 then made way to a more pragmatic approach known as HTML 3.2, which was completed in 1997. HTML4 followed, reaching completion in 1998.
At this time, the W3C membership decided to stop evolving HTML and instead begin work on an XML-based equivalent, called XHTML. This effort started with a reformulation of HTML4 in XML, known as XHTML 1.0, which added no new features except the new serialization, and which was completed in 2000. After XHTML 1.0, the W3C's focus turned to making it easier for other working groups to extend XHTML, under the banner of XHTML Modularization. In parallel with this, the W3C also worked on a new language that was not compatible with the earlier HTML and XHTML languages, calling it XHTML2.
Around the time that HTML's evolution was stopped in 1998, parts of the API for HTML developed by browser vendors were specified and published under the name DOM Level 1 (in 1998) and DOM Level 2 Core and DOM Level 2 HTML (starting in 2000 and culminating in 2003). These efforts then petered out, with some DOM Level 3 specifications published in 2004 but the working group being closed before all the Level 3 drafts were completed.
In 2003, the publication of XForms, a technology which was positioned as the next generation of Web forms, sparked a renewed interest in evolving HTML itself, rather than finding replacements for it. This interest was borne from the realization that XML's deployment as a Web technology was limited to entirely new technologies (like RSS and later Atom), rather than as a replacement for existing deployed technologies (like HTML).
A proof of concept to show that it was possible to extend HTML4's forms to provide many of the features that XForms 1.0 introduced, without requiring browsers to implement rendering engines that were incompatible with existing HTML Web pages, was the first result of this renewed interest. At this early stage, while the draft was already publicly available, and input was already being solicited from all sources, the specification was only under Opera Software's copyright.
The idea that HTML's evolution should be reopened was tested at a W3C workshop in 2004, where some of the principles that underlie the HTML5 work (described below), as well as the aforementioned early draft proposal covering just forms-related features, were presented to the W3C jointly by Mozilla and Opera. The proposal was rejected on the grounds that the proposal conflicted with the previously chosen direction for the Web's evolution; the W3C staff and membership voted to continue developing XML-based replacements instead.
Shortly thereafter, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera jointly announced their intent to continue working on the effort under the umbrella of a new venue called the WHATWG. A public mailing list was created, and the draft was moved to the WHATWG site. The copyright was subsequently amended to be jointly owned by all three vendors, and to allow reuse of the specification.
The WHATWG was based on several core principles, in particular that technologies need to be backwards compatible, that specifications and implementations need to match even if this means changing the specification rather than the implementations, and that specifications need to be detailed enough that implementations can achieve complete interoperability without reverse-engineering each other.
The latter requirement in particular required that the scope of the HTML5 specification include what had previously been specified in three separate documents: HTML4, XHTML1, and DOM2 HTML. It also meant including significantly more detail than had previously been considered the norm.
In 2006, the W3C indicated an interest to participate in the development of HTML5 after all, and in 2007 formed a working group chartered to work with the WHATWG on the development of the HTML5 specification. Apple, Mozilla, and Opera allowed the W3C to publish the specification under the W3C copyright, while keeping a version with the less restrictive license on the WHATWG site.
Since then, both groups have been working together.
The HTML specification published by the WHATWG is not identical to this specification. The main differences are that the WHATWG version includes features not included in this W3C version: some features have been omitted as they are considered part of future revisions of HTML, not HTML5; and other features are omitted because at the W3C they are published as separate specifications. There are also some minor differences. For an exact list of differences, please see the WHATWG specification.
A separate document has been published by the W3C HTML working group to document the differences between this specification and the language described in the HTML4 specification. [HTMLDIFF]
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
It must be admitted that many aspects of HTML appear at first glance to be nonsensical and inconsistent.
HTML, its supporting DOM APIs, as well as many of its supporting technologies, have been developed over a period of several decades by a wide array of people with different priorities who, in many cases, did not know of each other's existence.
Features have thus arisen from many sources, and have not always been designed in especially consistent ways. Furthermore, because of the unique characteristics of the Web, implementation bugs have often become de-facto, and now de-jure, standards, as content is often unintentionally written in ways that rely on them before they can be fixed.
Despite all this, efforts have been made to adhere to certain design goals. These are described in the next few subsections.
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This section is non-normative.
To avoid exposing Web authors to the complexities of multithreading, the HTML and DOM APIs are designed such that no script can ever detect the simultaneous execution of other scripts. Even with workers, the intent is that the behavior of implementations can be thought of as completely serializing the execution of all scripts in all browsing contexts.
The navigator.yieldForStorageUpdates()
method, in this model, is equivalent to allowing other scripts to
run while the calling script is blocked.
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
This specification interacts with and relies on a wide variety of other specifications. In certain circumstances, unfortunately, conflicting needs have led to this specification violating the requirements of these other specifications. Whenever this has occurred, the transgressions have each been noted as a "willful violation", and the reason for the violation has been noted.
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
This specification defines an abstract language for describing documents and applications, and some APIs for interacting with in-memory representations of resources that use this language.
The in-memory representation is known as "DOM HTML", or "the DOM" for short. This specification defines version 5 of DOM HTML, known as "DOM5 HTML".
There are various concrete syntaxes that can be used to transmit resources that use this abstract language, two of which are defined in this specification.
The first such concrete syntax is the HTML syntax. This is the
format suggested for most authors. It is compatible with most legacy
Web browsers. If a document is transmitted with an HTML MIME
type, such as text/html, then it will be
processed as an HTML document by Web browsers.
This specification defines version 5 of the HTML syntax, known as
"HTML5".
The second concrete syntax is the XHTML syntax, which is an
application of XML. When a document is transmitted with an XML
MIME type, such as application/xhtml+xml, then
it is treated as an XML document by Web browsers, to be parsed by an
XML processor. Authors are reminded that the processing for XML and
HTML differs; in particular, even minor syntax errors will prevent a
document labeled as XML from being rendered fully, whereas they
would be ignored in the HTML syntax.
This specification defines version 5 of the XHTML syntax, known as
"XHTML5".
The DOM, the HTML syntax, and XML cannot all represent the same
content. For example, namespaces cannot be represented using the
HTML syntax, but they are supported in the DOM and in XML.
Similarly, documents that use the noscript feature can
be represented using the HTML syntax, but cannot be represented with
the DOM or in XML. Comments that contain the string "-->" can only be represented in the DOM, not in
the HTML and XML syntaxes.
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This section is non-normative.
This specification is divided into the following major sections:
There are also some appendices, defining rendering rules for Web browsers and listing obsolete features and IANA considerations.
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This specification should be read like all other specifications. First, it should be read cover-to-cover, multiple times. Then, it should be read backwards at least once. Then it should be read by picking random sections from the contents list and following all the cross-references.
Status: Last call for comments
This is a definition, requirement, or explanation.
This is a note.
This is an example.
This is an open issue.
This is a warning.
interface Example {
// this is an IDL definition
};method( [ optionalArgument ] )This is a note to authors describing the usage of an interface.
/* this is a CSS fragment */
The defining instance of a term is marked up like this. Uses of that term are marked up like this or like this.
The defining instance of an element, attribute, or API is marked
up like this. References to
that element, attribute, or API are marked up like this.
Other code fragments are marked up like
this.
Variables are marked up like this.
This is an implementation requirement.
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
A basic HTML document looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Sample page</title> </head> <body> <h1>Sample page</h1> <p>This is a <a href="demo.html">simple</a> sample.</p> <!-- this is a comment --> </body> </html>
HTML documents consist of a tree of elements and text. Each
element is denoted in the source by a start tag, such as "<body>", and an end
tag, such as "</body>". (Certain
start tags and end tags can in certain cases be omitted and are implied by other
tags.)
Tags have to be nested such that elements are all completely within each other, without overlapping:
<p>This is <em>very <strong>wrong</em>!</strong></p>
<p>This <em>is <strong>correct</strong>.</em></p>
This specification defines a set of elements that can be used in HTML, along with rules about the ways in which the elements can be nested.
Elements can have attributes, which control how the elements
work. In the example below, there is a hyperlink,
formed using the a element and its href attribute:
<a href="demo.html">simple</a>
Attributes are placed
inside the start tag, and consist of a name and a value, separated by an "=" character. The attribute value can remain unquoted if it doesn't contain spaces or any of
" ' ` = <
or >. Otherwise, it has to be quoted using
either single or double quotes. The value, along with the "=" character, can be omitted altogether if the value
is the empty string.
<!-- empty attributes --> <input name=address disabled> <input name=address disabled=""> <!-- attributes with a value --> <input name=address maxlength=200> <input name=address maxlength='200'> <input name=address maxlength="200">
HTML user agents (e.g. Web browsers) then parse this markup, turning it into a DOM (Document Object Model) tree. A DOM tree is an in-memory representation of a document.
DOM trees contain several kinds of nodes, in particular a DOCTYPE node, elements, text nodes, and comment nodes.
The markup snippet at the top of this section would be turned into the following DOM tree:
The root element of this tree is the
html element, which is the element always found at the
root of HTML documents. It contains two elements, head
and body, as well as a text node between them.
There are many more text nodes in the DOM tree than one would initially expect, because the source contains a number of spaces (represented here by "␣") and line breaks ("⏎") that all end up as text nodes in the DOM.
The head element contains a title
element, which itself contains a text node with the text "Sample
page". Similarly, the body element contains an
h1 element, a p element, and a
comment.
This DOM tree can be manipulated from scripts in the
page. Scripts (typically in JavaScript) are small programs that can
be embedded using the script element or using
event handler content attributes. For example, here is
a form with a script that sets the value of the form's
output element to say "Hello World":
<form name="main"> Result: <output name="result"></output> <script> document.forms.main.elements.result.value = 'Hello World'; </script> </form>
Each element in the DOM tree is represented by an object, and
these objects have APIs so that they can be manipulated. For
instance, a link (e.g. the a element in the tree above)
can have its "href"
attribute changed in several ways:
var a = document.links[0]; // obtain the first link in the document
a.href = 'sample.html'; // change the destination URL of the link
a.protocol = 'https'; // change just the scheme part of the URL
a.setAttribute('href', 'http://example.com/'); // change the content attribute directlySince DOM trees are used as the way to represent HTML documents when they are processed and presented by implementations (especially interactive implementations like Web browsers), this specification is mostly phrased in terms of DOM trees, instead of the markup described above.
HTML documents represent a media-independent description of interactive content. HTML documents might be rendered to a screen, or through a speech synthesizer, or on a braille display. To influence exactly how such rendering takes place, authors can use a styling language such as CSS.
In the following example, the page has been made yellow-on-blue using CSS.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Sample styled page</title>
<style>
body { background: navy; color: yellow; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Sample styled page</h1>
<p>This page is just a demo.</p>
</body>
</html>For more details on how to use HTML, authors are encouraged to consult tutorials and guides. Some of the examples included in this specification might also be of use, but the novice author is cautioned that this specification, by necessity, defines the language with a level of detail that might be difficult to understand at first.
This section is non-normative.
Unlike previous versions of the HTML specification, this specification defines in some detail the required processing for invalid documents as well as valid documents.
However, even though the processing of invalid content is in most cases well-defined, conformance requirements for documents are still important: in practice, interoperability (the situation in which all implementations process particular content in a reliable and identical or equivalent way) is not the only goal of document conformance requirements. This section details some of the more common reasons for still distinguishing between a conforming document and one with errors.
This section is non-normative.
The majority of presentational features from previous versions of HTML are no longer allowed. Presentational markup in general has been found to have a number of problems:
While it is possible to use presentational markup in a way that provides users of assistive technologies (ATs) with an acceptable experience (e.g. using ARIA), doing so is significantly more difficult than doing so when using semantically-appropriate markup. Furthermore, even using such techniques doesn't help make pages accessible for non-AT non-graphical users, such as users of text-mode browsers.
Using media-independent markup, on the other hand, provides an easy way for documents to be authored in such a way that they work for more users (e.g. text browsers).
It is significantly easier to maintain a site written in such a
way that the markup is style-independent. For example, changing
the color of a site that uses <font color="">
throughout requires changes across the entire site, whereas a
similar change to a site based on CSS can be done by changing a
single file.
Presentational markup tends to be much more redundant, and thus results in larger document sizes.
For those reasons, presentational markup has been removed from HTML in this version. This change should not come as a surprise; HTML4 deprecated presentational markup many years ago and provided a mode (HTML4 Transitional) to help authors move away from presentational markup; later, XHTML 1.1 went further and obsoleted those features altogether.
The only remaining presentational markup features in HTML are the
style attribute and the
style element. Use of the style attribute is somewhat discouraged in
production environments, but it can be useful for rapid prototyping
(where its rules can be directly moved into a separate style sheet
later) and for providing specific styles in unusual cases where a
separate style sheet would be inconvenient. Similarly, the
style element can be useful in syndication or for
page-specific styles, but in general an external style sheet is
likely to be more convenient when the styles apply to multiple
pages.
It is also worth noting that four elements that were previously
presentational have been redefined in this specification to be
media-independent: b, i, hr,
and small.
This section is non-normative.
The syntax of HTML is constrained to avoid a wide variety of problems.
Certain invalid syntax constructs, when parsed, result in DOM trees that are highly unintuitive.
To allow user agents to be used in controlled environments without having to implement the more bizarre and convoluted error handling rules, user agents are permitted to fail whenever encountering a parse error.
Some error-handling behavior, such as the behavior for the
<table><hr>... example mentioned
above, are incompatible with streaming user agents. To avoid
interoperability problems with such user agents, any syntax
resulting in such behavior is considered invalid.
When a user agent based on XML is connected to an HTML parser, it is possible that certain invariants that XML enforces, such as comments never containing two consecutive hyphens, will be violated by an HTML file. Handling this can require that the parser coerce the HTML DOM into an XML-compatible infoset. Most syntax constructs that require such handling are considered invalid.
Certain syntax constructs can result in disproportionally poor performance. To discourage the use of such constructs, they are typically made non-conforming.
For example, the following markup results in poor performance when hitting the highlighted end tag, since all the open elements are examined first to see if they match the close tag:
<p><em><span><span><span>...<span><span><span></em>
There are syntax constructs that, for historical reasons, are relatively fragile. To help reduce the number of users who accidentally run into such problems, they are made non-conforming.
For example, the parsing of certain named character references in attributes happens even with the closing semicolon being omitted. It is safe to include an ampersand followed by letters that do not form a named character reference, but if the letters are changed to a string that does form a named character reference, they will be interpreted as that character instead.
In this fragment, the attribute's value is "?hello=1&world=2":
<a href="?hello=1&world=2">Demo</a>
In the following fragment, however, the attribute's value is
actually "?original=1©=2",
not the intended "?original=1©=2":
<a href="?original=1©=2">Compare</a>
To avoid this problem, all named character references are required to end with a semicolon, and uses of named character references without a semicolon are flagged as errors.
Thus, the correct way to express the above cases is as follows:
<a href="?hello=1&world=2">Demo</a> <!-- &world is ok, since it's not a named character reference -->
<a href="?original=1&copy=2">Compare</a> <!-- the & has to be escaped, since © is a named character reference -->
Certain syntax constructs are known to cause especially subtle or serious problems in legacy user agents, and are therefore marked as non-conforming to help authors avoid them.
For example, this is why the U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT character (`) is not allowed in unquoted attributes. In certain legacy user agents, it is sometimes treated as a quote character.
Another example of this is the DOCTYPE, which is required to trigger no-quirks mode, because the behavior of legacy user agents in quirks mode is often largely undocumented.
Certain restrictions exist purely to avoid known security problems.
For example, the restriction on using UTF-7 exists purely to avoid authors falling prey to a known cross-site-scripting attack using UTF-7.
Markup where the author's intent is very unclear is often made non-conforming. Correcting these errors early makes later maintenance easier.
When a user makes a simple typo, it is helpful if the error can be caught early, as this can save the author a lot of debugging time. This specification therefore usually considers it an error to use element names, attribute names, and so forth, that do not match the names defined in this specification.
For example, if the author typed <capton>
instead of <caption>, this would be flagged as an
error and the author could correct the typo immediately.
In order to allow the language syntax to be extended in the future, certain otherwise harmless features are disallowed.
For example, "attributes" in end tags are ignored currently, but they are invalid, in case a future change to the language makes use of that syntax feature without conflicting with already-deployed (and valid!) content.
Some authors find it helpful to be in the practice of always quoting all attributes and always including all optional tags, preferring the consistency derived from such custom over the minor benefits of terseness afforded by making use of the flexibility of the HTML syntax. To aid such authors, conformance checkers can provide modes of operation wherein such conventions are enforced.
This section is non-normative.
Beyond the syntax of the language, this specification also places restrictions on how elements and attributes can be specified. These restrictions are present for similar reasons:
To avoid misuse of elements with defined meanings, content models are defined that restrict how elements can be nested when such nestings would be of dubious value.
For example, this specification disallows
nesting a section element inside a kbd
element, since it is highly unlikely for an author to indicate
that an entire section should be keyed in.
Similarly, to draw the author's attention to mistakes in the use of elements, clear contradictions in the semantics expressed are also considered conformance errors.
In the fragments below, for example, the semantics are nonsensical: a row cannot simultaneously be a cell, nor can a radio button be a progress bar.
<tr role="cell">
<input type=radio role=progressbar>
Another example is the restrictions on the
content models of the ul element, which only allows
li element children. Lists by definition consist just
of zero or more list items, so if a ul element
contains something other than an li element, it's not
clear what was meant.
Certain elements have default styles or behaviors that make certain combinations likely to lead to confusion. Where these have equivalent alternatives without this problem, the confusing combinations are disallowed.
For example, div elements are
rendered as block boxes, and span elements as inline
boxes. Putting a block box in an inline box is unnecessarily
confusing; since either nesting just div elements, or
nesting just span elements, or nesting
span elements inside div elements all
serve the same purpose as nesting a div element in a
span element, but only the latter involves a block
box in an inline box, the latter combination is disallowed.
Another example would be the way
interactive content cannot be nested. For example, a
button element cannot contain a textarea
element. This is because the default behavior of such nesting
interactive elements would be highly confusing to users. Instead
of nesting these elements, they can be placed side by side.
Sometimes, something is disallowed because allowing it would likely cause author confusion.
For example, setting the disabled attribute to the value
"false" is disallowed, because despite the
appearance of meaning that the element is enabled, it in fact
means that the element is disabled (what matters for
implementations is the presence of the attribute, not its
value).
Some conformance errors simplify the language that authors need to learn.
For example, the area element's
shape attribute, despite
accepting both circ and circle values in
practice as synonyms, disallows the use of the circ value, so as to
simplify tutorials and other learning aids. There would be no
benefit to allowing both, but it would cause extra confusion when
teaching the language.
Certain elements are parsed in somewhat eccentric ways (typically for historical reasons), and their content model restrictions are intended to avoid exposing the author to these issues.
For example, a form element isn't allowed inside
phrasing content, because when parsed as HTML, a
form element's start tag will imply a p
element's end tag. Thus, the following markup results in two
paragraphs, not one:
<p>Welcome. <form><label>Name:</label> <input></form>
It is parsed exactly like the following:
<p>Welcome. </p><form><label>Name:</label> <input></form>
Some errors are intended to help prevent script problems that would be hard to debug.
This is why, for instance, it is non-conforming
to have two id attributes with the
same value. Duplicate IDs lead to the wrong element being
selected, with sometimes disastrous effects whose cause is hard to
determine.
Some constructs are disallowed because historically they have been the cause of a lot of wasted authoring time, and by encouraging authors to avoid making them, authors can save time in future efforts.
For example, a script element's
src attribute causes the
element's contents to be ignored. However, this isn't obvious,
especially if the element's contents appear to be executable
script — which can lead to authors spending a lot of time
trying to debug the inline script without realizing that it is not
executing. To reduce this problem, this specification makes it
non-conforming to have executable script in a script
element when the src
attribute is present. This means that authors who are validating
their documents are less likely to waste time with this kind of
mistake.
Some authors like to write files that can be interpreted as both XML and HTML with similar results. Though this practice is discouraged in general due to the myriad of subtle complications involved (especially when involving scripting, styling, or any kind of automated serialization), this specification has a few restrictions intended to at least somewhat mitigate the difficulties. This makes it easier for authors to use this as a transitionary step when migrating between HTML and XHTML.
For example, there are somewhat complicated
rules surrounding the lang and
xml:lang attributes intended
to keep the two synchronized.
Another example would be the restrictions on
the values of xmlns attributes in the HTML
serialization, which are intended to ensure that elements in
conforming documents end up in the same namespaces whether
processed as HTML or XML.
As with the restrictions on the syntax intended to allow for new syntax in future revisions of the language, some restrictions on the content models of elements and values of attributes are intended to allow for future expansion of the HTML vocabulary.
For example, limiting the values of the target attribute that start
with an U+005F LOW LINE character (_) to only specific predefined
values allows new predefined values to be introduced at a future
time without conflicting with author-defined values.
Certain restrictions are intended to support the restrictions made by other specifications.
For example, requiring that attributes that take media queries use only valid media queries reinforces the importance of following the conformance rules of that specification.
Status: Last call for comments
This section is non-normative.
The following documents might be of interest to readers of this specification.
This Architectural Specification provides authors of specifications, software developers, and content developers with a common reference for interoperable text manipulation on the World Wide Web, building on the Universal Character Set, defined jointly by the Unicode Standard and ISO/IEC 10646. Topics addressed include use of the terms 'character', 'encoding' and 'string', a reference processing model, choice and identification of character encodings, character escaping, and string indexing.
Because Unicode contains such a large number of characters and incorporates the varied writing systems of the world, incorrect usage can expose programs or systems to possible security attacks. This is especially important as more and more products are internationalized. This document describes some of the security considerations that programmers, system analysts, standards developers, and users should take into account, and provides specific recommendations to reduce the risk of problems.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.
This specification provides guidelines for designing Web content authoring tools that are more accessible for people with disabilities. An authoring tool that conforms to these guidelines will promote accessibility by providing an accessible user interface to authors with disabilities as well as by enabling, supporting, and promoting the production of accessible Web content by all authors.
This document provides guidelines for designing user agents that lower barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities. User agents include browsers and other types of software that retrieve and render Web content. A user agent that conforms to these guidelines will promote accessibility through its own user interface and through other internal facilities, including its ability to communicate with other technologies (especially assistive technologies). Furthermore, all users, not just users with disabilities, should find conforming user agents to be more usable.
Status: Last call for comments
This specification refers to both HTML and XML attributes and IDL attributes, often in the same context. When it is not clear which is being referred to, they are referred to as content attributes for HTML and XML attributes, and IDL attributes for those defined on IDL interfaces. Similarly, the term "properties" is used for both JavaScript object properties and CSS properties. When these are ambiguous they are qualified as object properties and CSS properties respectively.
Generally, when the specification states that a feature applies to the HTML syntax or the XHTML syntax, it also includes the other. When a feature specifically only applies to one of the two languages, it is called out by explicitly stating that it does not apply to the other format, as in "for HTML, ... (this does not apply to XHTML)".
This specification uses the term document to refer to any use of HTML, ranging from short static documents to long essays or reports with rich multimedia, as well as to fully-fledged interactive applications.
For simplicity, terms such as shown, displayed, and visible might sometimes be used when referring to the way a document is rendered to the user. These terms are not meant to imply a visual medium; they must be considered to apply to other media in equivalent ways.
When an algorithm B says to return to another algorithm A, it implies that A called B. Upon returning to A, the implementation must continue from where it left off in calling B.
Status: Last call for comments
The specification uses the term supported when referring to whether a user agent has an implementation capable of decoding the semantics of an external resource. A format or type is said to be supported if the implementation can process an external resource of that format or type without critical aspects of the resource being ignored. Whether a specific resource is supported can depend on what features of the resource's format are in use.
For example, a PNG image would be considered to be in a supported format if its pixel data could be decoded and rendered, even if, unbeknownst to the implementation, the image also contained animation data.
A MPEG4 video file would not be considered to be in a supported format if the compression format used was not supported, even if the implementation could determine the dimensions of the movie from the file's metadata.
What some specifications, in particular the HTTP and URI specifications, refer to as a representation is referred to in this specification as a resource. [HTTP] [RFC3986]
The term MIME type is used to refer to what is sometimes called an Internet media type in protocol literature. The term media type in this specification is used to refer to the type of media intended for presentation, as used by the CSS specifications. [RFC2046] [MQ]
A string is a valid MIME type if it matches the media-type rule defined in section 3.7 "Media Types"
of RFC 2616. In particular, a valid MIME type may
include MIME type parameters. [HTTP]
A string is a valid MIME type with no parameters if it
matches the media-type rule defined in section
3.7 "Media Types" of RFC 2616, but does not contain any U+003B
SEMICOLON characters (;). In other words, if it consists only of a
type and subtype, with no MIME Type parameters. [HTTP]
The term HTML MIME type is used to refer to the MIME types text/html and
text/html-sandboxed.
A resource's critical subresources are those that the
resource needs to have available to be correctly processed. Which
resources are considered critical or not is defined by the
specification that defines the resource's format. For CSS resources,
only @import rules introduce critical
subresources; other resources, e.g. fonts or backgrounds, are
not.
Status: Last call for comments
To ease migration from HTML to XHTML, UAs
conforming to this specification will place elements in HTML in the
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace, at least for
the purposes of the DOM and CSS. The term "HTML
elements", when used in this specification, refers to any
element in that namespace, and thus refers to both HTML and XHTML
elements.
Except where otherwise stated, all elements defined or mentioned
in this specification are in the
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml namespace, and all
attributes defined or mentioned in this specification have no
namespace.
Attribute names are said to be XML-compatible if they
match the Name production defined in XML, they contain no
U+003A COLON characters (:), and their first three characters are
not an ASCII case-insensitive match for the string
"xml". [XML]
The term XML MIME type is used to refer to the MIME types text/xml,
application/xml, and any MIME
type whose subtype ends with the four characters "+xml". [RFC3023]
Status: Last call for comments
The term root element, when not explicitly qualified as referring to the document's root element, means the furthest ancestor element node of whatever node is being discussed, or the node itself if it has no ancestors. When the node is a part of the document, then the node's root element is indeed the document's root element; however, if the node is not currently part of the document tree, the root element will be an orphaned node.
When an element's root element is the root element
of a Document, it is said to be in a
Document. An element is said to have been inserted into a
document when its root element changes and is now
the document's root element. Analogously, an element is
said to have been removed from a document when its root
element changes from being the document's root
element to being another element.
A node's home subtree is the subtree rooted at that
node's root element. When a node is in a
Document, its home subtree is that
Document's tree.
The Document of a Node (such as an
element) is the Document that the Node's
ownerDocument IDL
attribute returns. When a Node is in a
Document then that Document is
always the Node's Document, and the
Node's ownerDocument IDL attribute
thus always returns that Document.
The term tree order means a pre-order, depth-first
traversal of DOM nodes involved (through the parentNode/childNodes relationship).
When it is stated that some element or attribute is ignored, or treated as some other value, or handled as if it was something else, this refers only to the processing of the node after it is in the DOM. A user agent must not mutate the DOM in such situations.
The term text node refers to any Text
node, including CDATASection nodes; specifically, any
Node with node type TEXT_NODE (3)
or CDATA_SECTION_NODE (4). [DOMCORE]
A content attribute is said to change value only if its new value is different than its previous value; setting an attribute to a value it already has does not change it.
Status: Last call for comments
The construction "a Foo object", where
Foo is actually an interface, is sometimes used instead
of the more accurate "an object implementing the interface
Foo".
An IDL attribute is said to be getting when its value is being retrieved (e.g. by author script), and is said to be setting when a new value is assigned to it.
If a DOM object is said to be live, then the attributes and methods on that object must operate on the actual underlying data, not a snapshot of the data.
The terms fire and dispatch are used interchangeably in the context of events, as in the DOM Events specifications. The term trusted event is used as defined by the DOM Events specification. [DOMEVENTS]
Status: Last call for comments
The term plugin refers to a user-agent defined set of
content handlers used by the user agent that can take part in the
user agent's rendering of a Document object, but that
neither act as child browsing
contexts of the Document nor introduce any
Node objects to the Document's DOM.
Typically such content handlers are provided by third parties, though a user agent can also designate built-in content handlers as plugins.
A user agent must not consider the types text/plain
and application/octet-stream as having a registered
plugin.
One example of a plugin would be a PDF viewer that is instantiated in a browsing context when the user navigates to a PDF file. This would count as a plugin regardless of whether the party that implemented the PDF viewer component was the same as that which implemented the user agent itself. However, a PDF viewer application that launches separate from the user agent (as opposed to using the same interface) is not a plugin by this definition.
This specification does not define a mechanism for interacting with plugins, as it is expected to be user-agent- and platform-specific. Some UAs might opt to support a plugin mechanism such as the Netscape Plugin API; others might use remote content converters or have built-in support for certain types. [NPAPI]
Browsers should take extreme care when interacting with external content intended for plugins. When third-party software is run with the same privileges as the user agent itself, vulnerabilities in the third-party software become as dangerous as those in the user agent.
Status: Last call for comments. ISSUE-101 (us-ascii-ref) blocks progress to Last Call
The preferred MIME name of a character encoding is the name or alias labeled as "preferred MIME name" in the IANA Character Sets registry, if there is one, or the encoding's name, if none of the aliases are so labeled. [IANACHARSET]
An ASCII-compatible character encoding is a single-byte or variable-length encoding in which the bytes 0x09, 0x0A, 0x0C, 0x0D, 0x20 - 0x22, 0x26, 0x27, 0x2C - 0x3F, 0x41 - 0x5A, and 0x61 - 0x7A, ignoring bytes that are the second and later bytes of multibyte sequences, all correspond to single-byte sequences that map to the same Unicode characters as those bytes in ANSI_X3.4-1968 (US-ASCII). [RFC1345]
This includes such encodings as Shift_JIS, HZ-GB-2312, and variants of ISO-2022, even though it is possible in these encodings for bytes like 0x70 to be part of longer sequences that are unrelated to their interpretation as ASCII. It excludes such encodings as UTF-7, UTF-16, GSM03.38, and EBCDIC variants.
The term Unicode character is used to mean a Unicode scalar value (i.e. any Unicode code point that is not a surrogate code point). [UNICODE]
Status: Last call for comments
All diagrams, examples, and notes in this specification are non-normative, as are all sections explicitly marked non-normative. Everything else in this specification is normative.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in the normative parts of this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC2119. For readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase letters in this specification. [RFC2119]
Requirements phrased in the imperative as part of algorithms (such as "strip any leading space characters" or "return false and abort these steps") are to be interpreted with the meaning of the key word ("must", "should", "may", etc) used in introducing the algorithm.
This specification describes the conformance criteria for user agents (relevant to implementors) and documents (relevant to authors and authoring tool implementors).
Conforming documents are those that comply with all the conformance criteria for documents. For readability, some of these conformance requirements are phrased as conformance requirements on authors; such requirements are implicitly requirements on documents: by definition, all documents are assumed to have had an author. (In some cases, that author may itself be a user agent — such user agents are subject to additional rules, as explained below.)
For example, if a requirement states that
"authors must not use the foobar element", it
would imply that documents are not allowed to contain elements named
foobar.
User agents fall into several (overlapping) categories with different conformance requirements.
Web browsers that support the XHTML syntax must process elements and attributes from the HTML namespace found in XML documents as described in this specification, so that users can interact with them, unless the semantics of those elements have been overridden by other specifications.
A conforming XHTML processor would, upon
finding an XHTML script element in an XML document,
execute the script contained in that element. However, if the
element is found within a transformation expressed in XSLT
(assuming the user agent also supports XSLT), then the processor
would instead treat the script element as an opaque
element that forms part of the transform.
Web browsers that support the HTML syntax must process documents labeled with an HTML MIME type as described in this specification, so that users can interact with them.
User agents that support scripting must also be conforming implementations of the IDL fragments in this specification, as described in the Web IDL specification. [WEBIDL]
Unless explicitly stated, specifications that
override the semantics of HTML elements do not override the
requirements on DOM objects representing those elements. For
example, the script element in the example above
would still implement the HTMLScriptElement
interface.
User agents that process HTML and XHTML documents purely to render non-interactive versions of them must comply to the same conformance criteria as Web browsers, except that they are exempt from requirements regarding user interaction.
Typical examples of non-interactive presentation user agents are printers (static UAs) and overhead displays (dynamic UAs). It is expected that most static non-interactive presentation user agents will also opt to lack scripting support.
A non-interactive but dynamic presentation UA would still execute scripts, allowing forms to be dynamically submitted, and so forth. However, since the concept of "focus" is irrelevant when the user cannot interact with the document, the UA would not need to support any of the focus-related DOM APIs.
Implementations that do not support scripting (or which have their scripting features disabled entirely) are exempt from supporting the events and DOM interfaces mentioned in this specification. For the parts of this specification that are defined in terms of an events model or in terms of the DOM, such user agents must still act as if events and the DOM were supported.
Scripting can form an integral part of an application. Web browsers that do not support scripting, or that have scripting disabled, might be unable to fully convey the author's intent.
Conformance checkers must verify that a document conforms to
the applicable conformance criteria described in this
specification. Automated conformance checkers are exempt from
detecting errors that require interpretation of the author's
intent (for example, while a document is non-conforming if the
content of a blockquote element is not a quote,
conformance checkers running without the input of human judgement
do not have to check that blockquote elements only
contain quoted material).
Conformance checkers must check that the input document conforms when parsed without a browsing context (meaning that no scripts are run, and that the parser's scripting flag is disabled), and should also check that the input document conforms when parsed with a browsing context in which scripts execute, and that the scripts never cause non-conforming states to occur other than transiently during script execution itself. (This is only a "SHOULD" and not a "MUST" requirement because it has been proven to be impossible. [COMPUTABLE])
The term "HTML5 validator" can be used to refer to a conformance checker that itself conforms to the applicable requirements of this specification.
XML DTDs cannot express all the conformance requirements of this specification. Therefore, a validating XML processor and a DTD cannot constitute a conformance checker. Also, since neither of the two authoring formats defined in this specification are applications of SGML, a validating SGML system cannot constitute a conformance checker either.
To put it another way, there are three types of conformance criteria:
A conformance checker must check for the first two. A simple DTD-based validator only checks for the first class of errors and is therefore not a conforming conformance checker according to this specification.
Applications and tools that process HTML and XHTML documents for reasons other than to either render the documents or check them for conformance should act in accordance with the semantics of the documents that they process.
A tool that generates document outlines but increases the nesting level for each paragraph and does not increase the nesting level for each section would not be conforming.
Authoring tools and markup generators must generate conforming documents. Conformance criteria that apply to authors also apply to authoring tools, where appropriate.
Authoring tools are exempt from the strict requirements of using elements only for their specified purpose, but only to the extent that authoring tools are not yet able to determine author intent. However, authoring tools must not automatically misuse elements or encourage their users to do so.
For example, it is not conforming to use an
address element for arbitrary contact information;
that element can only be used for marking up contact information
for the author of the document or section. However, since an
authoring tool is likely unable to determine the difference, an
authoring tool is exempt from that requirement. This does not
mean, though, that authoring tools can use address
elements for any block of italics text (for instance); it just
means that the authoring tool doesn't have to verify that when the
user uses a tool for inserting contact information for a section,
that the user really is doing that and not inserting something
else instead.
In terms of conformance checking, an editor has to output documents that conform to the same extent that a conformance checker will verify.
When an authoring tool is used to edit a non-conforming document, it may preserve the conformance errors in sections of the document that were not edited during the editing session (i.e. an editing tool is allowed to round-trip erroneous content). However, an authoring tool must not claim that the output is conformant if errors have been so preserved.
Authoring tools are expected to come in two broad varieties: tools that work from structure or semantic data, and tools that work on a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get media-specific editing basis (WYSIWYG).
The former is the preferred mechanism for tools that author HTML, since the structure in the source information can be used to make informed choices regarding which HTML elements and attributes are most appropriate.
However, WYSIWYG tools are legitimate. WYSIWYG tools should use
elements they know are appropriate, and should not use elements
that they do not know to be appropriate. This might in certain
extreme cases mean limiting the use of flow elements to just a few
elements, like div, b, i,
and span and making liberal use of the style attribute.
All authoring tools, whether WYSIWYG or not, should make a best effort attempt at enabling users to create well-structured, semantically rich, media-independent content.
Some conformance requirements are phrased as requirements on elements, attributes, methods or objects. Such requirements fall into two categories: those describing content model restrictions, and those describing implementation behavior. Those in the former category are requirements on documents and authoring tools. Those in the second category are requirements on user agents. Similarly, some conformance requirements are phrased as requirements on authors; such requirements are to be interpreted as conformance requirements on the documents that authors produce. (In other words, this specification does not distinguish between conformance criteria on authors and conformance criteria on documents.)
Conformance requirements phrased as algorithms or specific steps may be implemented in any manner, so long as the end result is equivalent. (In particular, the algorithms defined in this specification are intended to be easy to follow, and not intended to be performant.)
User agents may impose implementation-specific limits on otherwise unconstrained inputs, e.g. to prevent denial of service attacks, to guard against running out of memory, or to work around platform-specific limitations.
There is no implied relationship between document conformance requirements and implementation conformance requirements. User agents are not free to handle non-conformant documents as they please; the processing model described in this specification applies to implementations regardless of the conformity of the input documents.
For compatibility with existing content and prior specifications, this specification describes two authoring formats: one based on XML (referred to as the XHTML syntax), and one using a custom format inspired by SGML (referred to as the HTML syntax). Implementations may support only one of these two formats, although supporting both is encouraged.
The language in this specification assumes that the user agent expands all entity references, and therefore does not include entity reference nodes in the DOM. If user agents do include entity reference nodes in the DOM, then user agents must handle them as if they were fully expanded when implementing this specification. For example, if a requirement talks about an element's child text nodes, then any text nodes that are children of an entity reference that is a child of that element would be used as well. Entity references to unknown entities must be treated as if they contained just an empty text node for the purposes of the algorithms defined in this specification.
Status: Last call for comments
This specification relies on several other underlying specifications.
Implementations that support the XHTML syntax must support some version of XML, as well as its corresponding namespaces specification, because that syntax uses an XML serialization with namespaces. [XML] [XMLNS]
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a representation — a model — of a document and its content. The DOM is not just an API; the conformance criteria of HTML implementations are defined, in this specification, in terms of operations on the DOM. [DOMCORE]
Implementations must support some version of DOM Core and DOM Events, because this specification is defined in terms of the DOM, and some of the features are defined as extensions to the DOM Core interfaces. [DOMCORE] [DOMEVENTS]
In particular, the following features are defined in the DOM Core specification: [DOMCORE]
Attr interfaceCDATASection interfaceComment interfaceDOMImplementation interfaceDocument interfaceDocumentFragment interfaceDocumentType interfaceDOMException interfaceElement interfaceNode interfaceNodeList interfaceProcessingInstruction interfaceText interfacecreateDocument() methodgetElementById() methodinsertBefore() methodownerDocument attributechildNodes attributelocalName attributeparentNode attributenamespaceURI attributetagName attributetextContent attributeThe following features are defined in the DOM Events specification: [DOMEVENTS]
Event interfaceEventTarget interfaceUIEvent interfaceclick eventDOMActivate eventtarget attributeThe following features are defined in the DOM Range specification: [DOMRANGE]
Range interfacedeleteContents() method selectNodeContents() method setEnd() method setStart() method collapsed attribute endContainer attribute endOffset attribute startContainer attribute startOffset attribute The IDL fragments in this specification must be interpreted as required for conforming IDL fragments, as described in the Web IDL specification. [WEBIDL]
Except where otherwise specified, if an IDL
attribute that is a floating point number type (double) is assigned an Infinity or Not-a-Number
(NaN) value, a NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR exception must be
raised.
Except where otherwise specified, if a method with an argument
that is a floating point number type (double)
is passed an Infinity or Not-a-Number (NaN) value, a
NOT_SUPPORTED_ERR exception must be raised.
Some parts of the language described by this specification only support JavaScript as the underlying scripting language. [ECMA262]
The term "JavaScript" is used to refer to ECMA262,
rather than the official term ECMAScript, since the term
JavaScript is more widely known. Similarly, the MIME
type used to refer to JavaScript in this specification is
text/javascript, since that is the most
commonly used type, despite it
being an officially obsoleted type according to RFC
4329. [RFC4329]
Implementations must support some version of the Media Queries language. [MQ]
Implementations must support the semantics of URLs defined in the URI and IRI specifications, as well as the semantics of IDNA domain names defined in the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) specification. [RFC3986] [RFC3987] [RFC3490]
This specification does not require support of any particular network protocol, style sheet language, scripting language, or any of the DOM specifications beyond those described above. However, the language described by this specification is biased towards CSS as the styling language, JavaScript as the scripting language, and HTTP as the network protocol, and several features assume that those languages and protocols are in use.
This specification might have certain additional requirements on character encodings, image formats, audio formats, and video formats in the respective sections.
Status: Last call for comments. ISSUE-41 (Decentralized-extensibility) blocks progress to Last Call
HTML has a wide number of extensibility mechanisms that can be used for adding semantics in a safe manner:
class
attribute to extend elements, effectively creating their own
elements, while using the most applicable existing "real" HTML
element, so that browsers and other tools that don't know of the
extension can still support it somewhat well. This is the tack used
by Microformats, for example.data-*="" attributes. These are
guaranteed to never be touched by browsers, and allow scripts to
include data on HTML elements that scripts can then look for and
process.<meta name=""
content=""> mechanism to include page-wide metadata by
registering extensions to the
predefined set of metadata names.rel="" mechanism to annotate
links with specific meanings by registering extensions to the predefined set of
link types. This is also used by Microformats.<script type=""> mechanism with a custom
type, for further handling by a inline or server-side scripts.embed element. This is how Flash
works.item="" and itemprop="" attributes) to embed
nested name-value pairs of data to be shared with other
applications and sites.Vendor-specific proprietary user agent extensions to this specification are strongly discouraged. Documents must not use such extensions, as doing so reduces interoperability and fragments the user base, allowing only users of specific user agents to access the content in question.
If such extensions are nonetheless needed, e.g. for experimental purposes, then vendors are strongly urged to use one of the following extension mechanisms:
For markup-level features that can be limited to the XML serialization and need not be supported in the HTML serialization, vendors should use the namespace mechanism to define custom namespaces in which the non-standard elements and attributes are supported.
For markup-level features that are intended for use with
the HTML syntax, extensions should be limited to new
attributes of the form "vendor--feature", where
vendor is a short string that identifies the
vendor responsible for the extension, and feature is the name of the feature. (Note the use of
two hyphens in the name.) New element names should not be
created. Using attributes for such extensions exclusively allows
extensions from multiple vendors to co-exist on the same element,
which would not be possible with elements. Using the "vendor--feature" form allows extensions to be made
without risk of conflicting with future additions to the
specification.
For instance, a browser named "FerretBrowser" could use "ferret" as a vendor prefix, while a browser named "Mellblom Browser" could use "mb". If both of these browsers invented extensions that turned elements into scratch-and-sniff areas, an author experimenting with these features could write:
<p>This smells of lemons!
<span ferret--smellovision ferret--smellcode="LEM01"
mb--outputsmell mb--smell="lemon juice"></span></p>
Attribute names containing two consecutive U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (-) characters are reserved for user agent use and are guaranteed to never be formally added to the HTML language.
Pages that use such attributes are by definition non-conforming.
For DOM extensions, e.g. new methods and IDL attributes, the new members should be prefixed by vendor-specific strings to prevent clashes with future versions of this specification.
All extensions must be defined so that the use of extensions neither contradicts nor causes the non-conformance of functionality defined in the specification.
For example, while strongly discouraged from doing so, an
implementation "Foo Browser" could add a new IDL attribute "fooTypeTime" to a control's DOM interface that
returned the time it took the user to select the current value of a
control (say). On the other hand, defining a new control that
appears in a form's elements
array would be in violation of the above requirement, as it would
violate the definition of elements given in this
specification.
When vendor-neutral extensions to this specification are needed, either this specification can be updated accordingly, or an extension specification can be written that overrides the requirements in this specification. When someone applying this specification to their activities decides that they will recognize the requirements of such an extension specification, it becomes an applicable specification for the purposes of conformance requirements in this specification.
User agents must treat elements and attributes that they do not understand as semantically neutral; leaving them in the DOM (for DOM processors), and styling them according to CSS (for CSS processors), but not inferring any meaning from them.
When support for a feature is disabled (e.g. as an emergency measure to mitigate a security problem, or to aid in development, or for performance reasons), user agents must act as if they had no support for the feature whatsoever, and as if the feature was not mentioned in this specification. For example, if a particular feature is accessed via an attribute in a Web IDL interface, the attribute itself would be omitted from the objects that implement that interface — leaving the attribute on the object but making it return null or throw an exception is insufficient.
Status: Last call for comments
Comparing two strings in a case-sensitive manner means comparing them exactly, code point for code point.
Comparing two strings in an ASCII case-insensitive manner means comparing them exactly, code point for code point, except that the characters in the range U+0041 to U+005A (i.e. LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z) and the corresponding characters in the range U+0061 to U+007A (i.e. LATIN SMALL LETTER A to LATIN SMALL LETTER Z) are considered to also match.
Comparing two strings in a compatibility caseless manner means using the Unicode compatibility caseless match operation to compare the two strings. [UNICODE]
Except where otherwise stated, string comparisons must be performed in a case-sensitive manner.
Converting a string to ASCII uppercase means replacing all characters in the range U+0061 to U+007A (i.e. LATIN SMALL LETTER A to LATIN SMALL LETTER Z) with the corresponding characters in the range U+0041 to U+005A (i.e. LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z).
Converting a string to ASCII lowercase means replacing all characters in the range U+0041 to U+005A (i.e. LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z) with the corresponding characters in the range U+0061 to U+007A (i.e. LATIN SMALL LETTER A to LATIN SMALL LETTER Z).
A string pattern is a prefix match for a string s when pattern is not longer than s and truncating s to pattern's length leaves the two strings as matches of each other.
Status: Last call for comments
There are various places in HTML that accept particular data types, such as dates or numbers. This section describes what the conformance criteria for content in those formats is, and how to parse them.
Implementors are strongly urged to carefully examine any third-party libraries they might consider using to implement the parsing of syntaxes described below. For example, date libraries are likely to implement error handling behavior that differs from what is required in this specification, since error-handling behavior is often not defined in specifications that describe date syntaxes similar to those used in this specification, and thus implementations tend to vary greatly in how they handle errors.
Status: Last call for comments
The space characters, for the purposes of this specification, are U+0020 SPACE, U+0009 CHARACTER TABULATION (tab), U+000A LINE FEED (LF), U+000C FORM FEED (FF), and U+000D CARRIAGE RETURN (CR).
The White_Space characters are
those that have the Unicode property "White_Space" in the Unicode
PropList.txt data file. [UNICODE]
This should not be confused with the "White_Space"
value (abbreviated "WS") of the "Bidi_Class" property in the Unicode.txt data file.
The alphanumeric ASCII characters are those in the ranges U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to U+005A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z, U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A to U+007A LATIN SMALL LETTER Z.
Some of the micro-parsers described below follow the pattern of having an input variable that holds the string being parsed, and having a position variable pointing at the next character to parse in input.
For parsers based on this pattern, a step that requires the user agent to collect a sequence of characters means that the following algorithm must be run, with characters being the set of characters that can be collected:
Let input and position be the same variables as those of the same name in the algorithm that invoked these steps.
Let result be the empty string.
While position doesn't point past the end of input and the character at position is one of the characters, append that character to the end of result and advance position to the next character in input.
Return result.
The step skip whitespace means that the user agent must collect a sequence of characters that are space characters. The step skip White_Space characters means that the user agent must collect a sequence of characters that are White_Space characters. In both cases, the collected characters are not used. [UNICODE]
When a user agent is to strip line breaks from a string, the user agent must remove any U+000A LINE FEED (LF) and U+000D CARRIAGE RETURN (CR) characters from that string.
When a user agent is to strip leading and trailing whitespace from a string, the user agent must remove all space characters that are at the start or end of the string.
The code-point length of a string is the number of Unicode code points in that string.
Status: Last call for comments
A number of attributes are boolean attributes. The presence of a boolean attribute on an element represents the true value, and the absence of the attribute represents the false value.
If the attribute is present, its value must either be the empty string or a value that is an ASCII case-insensitive match for the attribute's canonical name, with no leading or trailing whitespace.
The values "true" and "false" are not allowed on boolean attributes. To represent a false value, the attribute has to be omitted altogether.
Here is an example of a checkbox that is checked and disabled.
The checked and disabled attributes are the
boolean attributes.
<label><input type=checkbox checked name=cheese disabled> Cheese</label>
This could be equivalently written as this:
<label><input type=checkbox checked=checked name=cheese disabled=disabled> Cheese</label>
You can also mix styles; the following is still equivalent:
<label><input type='checkbox' checked name=cheese disabled=""> Cheese</label>
Status: Last call for comments
Some attributes are defined as taking one of a finite set of keywords. Such attributes are called enumerated attributes. The keywords are each defined to map to a particular state (several keywords might map to the same state, in which case some of the keywords are synonyms of each other; additionally, some of the keywords can be said to be non-conforming, and are only in the specification for historical reasons). In addition, two default states can be given. The first is the invalid value default, the second is the missing value default.
If an enumerated attribute is specified, the attribute's value must be an ASCII case-insensitive match for one of the given keywords that are not said to be non-conforming, with no leading or trailing whitespace.
When the attribute is specified, if its value is an ASCII case-insensitive match for one of the given keywords then that keyword's state is the state that the attribute represents. If the attribute value matches none of the given keywords, but the attribute has an invalid value default, then the attribute represents that state. Otherwise, if the attribute value matches none of the keywords but there is a missing value default state defined, then that is the state represented by the attribute. Otherwise, there is no default, and invalid values must be ignored.
When the attribute is not specified, if there is a missing value default state defined, then that is the state represented by the (missing) attribute. Otherwise, the absence of the attribute means that there is no state represented.
The empty string can be a valid keyword.
Status: Last call for comments
Status: Last call for comments
A string is a valid non-negative integer if it consists of one or more characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9).
A valid non-negative integer represents the number that is represented in base ten by that string of digits.
The rules for parsing non-negative integers are as given in the following algorithm. When invoked, the steps must be followed in the order given, aborting at the first step that returns a value. This algorithm will return either zero, a positive integer, or an error. Leading spaces are ignored. Trailing spaces and any trailing garbage characters are ignored.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
If position is past the end of input, return an error.
If the character indicated by position
is a U+002B PLUS SIGN character (+), advance position to the next character. (The "+" is ignored, but it is not conforming.)
If position is past the end of input, return an error.
If the character indicated by position is not one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then return an error.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), and interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let value be that integer.
Return value.
Status: Last call for comments
A string is a valid integer if it consists of one or more characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), optionally prefixed with a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-).
A valid integer without a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (-) prefix represents the number that is represented in base ten by that string of digits. A valid integer with a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (-) prefix represents the number represented in base ten by the string of digits that follows the U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS, subtracted from zero.
The rules for parsing integers are similar to the rules for non-negative integers, and are as given in the following algorithm. When invoked, the steps must be followed in the order given, aborting at the first step that returns a value. This algorithm will return either an integer or an error. Leading spaces are ignored. Trailing spaces and trailing garbage characters are ignored.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let sign have the value "positive".
If position is past the end of input, return an error.
If the character indicated by position (the first character) is a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-):
Otherwise, if the character indicated by position (the first character) is a U+002B PLUS SIGN character (+):
+" is ignored, but it is
not conforming.)If the character indicated by position is not one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then return an error.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), and interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let value be that integer.
If sign is "positive", return value, otherwise return the result of subtracting value from zero.
Status: Last call for comments
A string is a valid floating point number if it consists of:
A valid floating point number represents the number obtained by multiplying the significand by ten raised to the power of the exponent, where the significand is the first number, interpreted as base ten (including the decimal point and the number after the decimal point, if any, and interpreting the significand as a negative number if the whole string starts with a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-) and the number is not zero), and where the exponent is the number after the E, if any (interpreted as a negative number if there is a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-) between the E and the number and the number is not zero, or else ignoring a U+002B PLUS SIGN character (+) between the E and the number if there is one). If there is no E, then the exponent is treated as zero.
The Infinity and Not-a-Number (NaN) values are not valid floating point numbers.
The best representation of the number n as a floating point number is the string obtained from applying the JavaScript operator ToString to n. The JavaScript operator ToString is not uniquely determined. When there are multiple possible strings that could be obtained from the JavaScript operator ToString for a particular value, the user agent must always return the same string for that value (though it may differ from the value used by other user agents).
The rules for parsing floating point number values are as given in the following algorithm. This algorithm must be aborted at the first step that returns something. This algorithm will return either a number or an error. Leading spaces are ignored. Trailing spaces and garbage characters are ignored.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let value have the value 1.
Let divisor have the value 1.
Let exponent have the value 1.
If position is past the end of input, return an error.
If the character indicated by position is a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-):
If the character indicated by position is not one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then return an error.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), and interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Multiply value by that integer.
If the character indicated by position is a U+002E FULL STOP (.), run these substeps:
Advance position to the next character.
If position is past the end of input, or if the character indicated by position is not one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then jump to the step labeled conversion.
Fraction loop: Multiply divisor by ten.
Advance position to the next character.
If position is past the end of input, then jump to the step labeled conversion.
If the character indicated by position is one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), jump back to the step labeled fraction loop in these substeps.
If the character indicated by position is a U+0065 LATIN SMALL LETTER E character (e) or a U+0045 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E character (E), run these substeps:
Advance position to the next character.
If position is past the end of input, then jump to the step labeled conversion.
If the character indicated by position is a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-):
If position is past the end of input, then jump to the step labeled conversion.
Otherwise, if the character indicated by position is a U+002B PLUS SIGN character (+):
If position is past the end of input, then jump to the step labeled conversion.
If the character indicated by position is not one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then jump to the step labeled conversion.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), and interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Multiply exponent by that integer.
Multiply value by ten raised to the exponentth power.
Conversion: Let S be the set of finite IEEE 754 single-precision floating point values except −0, but with two special values added: 21024 and −21024.
Let rounded-value be the number in S that is closest to value, selecting the number with an even significand if there are two equally close values. (The two special values 21024 and −21024 are considered to have even significands for this purpose.)
If rounded-value is 21024 or −21024, return an error.
Return rounded-value.
Status: Last call for comments
The rules for parsing dimension values are as given in the following algorithm. When invoked, the steps must be followed in the order given, aborting at the first step that returns a value. This algorithm will return either a number greater than or equal to 1.0, or an error; if a number is returned, then it is further categorized as either a percentage or a length.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
If position is past the end of input, return an error.
If the character indicated by position is a U+002B PLUS SIGN character (+), advance position to the next character.
Collect a sequence of characters that are U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) characters, and discard them.
If position is past the end of input, return an error.
If the character indicated by position is not one of U+0031 DIGIT ONE (1) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then return an error.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), and interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let value be that number.
If position is past the end of input, return value as a length.
If the character indicated by position is a U+002E FULL STOP character (.):
Advance position to the next character.
If position is past the end of input, or if the character indicated by position is not one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then return value as a length.
Let divisor have the value 1.
Fraction loop: Multiply divisor by ten.
Advance position to the next character.
If position is past the end of input, then return value as a length.
If the character indicated by position is one of U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), return to the step labeled fraction loop in these substeps.
If position is past the end of input, return value as a length.
If the character indicated by position is a U+0025 PERCENT SIGN character (%), return value as a percentage.
Return value as a length.
Status: Last call for comments
A valid list of integers is a number of valid integers separated by U+002C COMMA characters, with no other characters (e.g. no space characters). In addition, there might be restrictions on the number of integers that can be given, or on the range of values allowed.
The rules for parsing a list of integers are as follows:
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let numbers be an initially empty list of integers. This list will be the result of this algorithm.
If there is a character in the string input at position position, and it is either a U+0020 SPACE, U+002C COMMA, or U+003B SEMICOLON character, then advance position to the next character in input, or to beyond the end of the string if there are no more characters.
If position points to beyond the end of input, return numbers and abort.
If the character in the string input at position position is a U+0020 SPACE, U+002C COMMA, or U+003B SEMICOLON character, then return to step 4.
Let negated be false.
Let value be 0.
Let started be false. This variable is set to true when the parser sees a number or a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-).
Let got number be false. This variable is set to true when the parser sees a number.
Let finished be false. This variable is set to true to switch parser into a mode where it ignores characters until the next separator.
Let bogus be false.
Parser: If the character in the string input at position position is:
Follow these substeps:
Follow these substeps:
Follow these substeps:
1,2,x,4".Follow these substeps:
Follow these substeps:
Advance position to the next character in input, or to beyond the end of the string if there are no more characters.
If position points to a character (and not to beyond the end of input), jump to the big Parser step above.
If negated is true, then negate value.
If got number is true, then append value to the numbers list.
Return the numbers list and abort.
Status: Last call for comments
The rules for parsing a list of dimensions are as follows. These rules return a list of zero or more pairs consisting of a number and a unit, the unit being one of percentage, relative, and absolute.
Let raw input be the string being parsed.
If the last character in raw input is a U+002C COMMA character (,), then remove that character from raw input.
Split the string raw input on commas. Let raw tokens be the resulting list of tokens.
Let result be an empty list of number/unit pairs.
For each token in raw tokens, run the following substeps:
Let input be the token.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let value be the number 0.
Let unit be absolute.
If position is past the end of input, set unit to relative and jump to the last substep.
If the character at position is a character in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), interpret the resulting sequence as an integer in base ten, and increment value by that integer.
If the character at position is a U+002E FULL STOP character (.), run these substeps:
Collect a sequence of characters consisting of space characters and characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). Let s be the resulting sequence.
Remove all space characters in s.
If s is not the empty string, run these subsubsteps:
Let length be the number of characters in s (after the spaces were removed).
Let fraction be the result of interpreting s as a base-ten integer, and then dividing that number by 10length.
Increment value by fraction.
If the character at position is a U+0025 PERCENT SIGN character (%), then set unit to percentage.
Otherwise, if the character at position is a U+002A ASTERISK character (*), then set unit to relative.
Add an entry to result consisting of the number given by value and the unit given by unit.
Return the list result.
Status: Last call for comments
In the algorithms below, the number of days in month month of year year is: 31 if month is 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, or 12; 30 if month is 4, 6, 9, or 11; 29 if month is 2 and year is a number divisible by 400, or if year is a number divisible by 4 but not by 100; and 28 otherwise. This takes into account leap years in the Gregorian calendar. [GREGORIAN]
The digits in the date and time syntaxes defined in this section must be characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), used to express numbers in base ten.
While the formats described here are intended to be subsets of the corresponding ISO8601 formats, this specification defines parsing rules in much more detail than ISO8601. Implementors are therefore encouraged to carefully examine any date parsing libraries before using them to implement the parsing rules described below; ISO8601 libraries might not parse dates and times in exactly the same manner. [ISO8601]
Status: Last call for comments
A month consists of a specific proleptic Gregorian date with no time-zone information and no date information beyond a year and a month. [GREGORIAN]
A string is a valid month string representing a year year and month month if it consists of the following components in the given order:
The rules to parse a month string are as follows. This will return either a year and month, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Parse a month component to obtain year and month. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is not beyond the end of input, then fail.
Return year and month.
The rules to parse a month component, given an input string and a position, are as follows. This will return either a year and a month, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not at least four characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the year.
If year is not a number greater than zero, then fail.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character, then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not exactly two characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the month.
If month is not a number in the range 1 ≤ month ≤ 12, then fail.
Return year and month.
Status: Last call for comments
A date consists of a specific proleptic Gregorian date with no time-zone information, consisting of a year, a month, and a day. [GREGORIAN]
A string is a valid date string representing a year year, month month, and day day if it consists of the following components in the given order:
The rules to parse a date string are as follows. This will return either a date, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Parse a date component to obtain year, month, and day. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is not beyond the end of input, then fail.
Let date be the date with year year, month month, and day day.
Return date.
The rules to parse a date component, given an input string and a position, are as follows. This will return either a year, a month, and a day, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Parse a month component to obtain year and month. If this returns nothing, then fail.
Let maxday be the number of days in month month of year year.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character, then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not exactly two characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the day.
If day is not a number in the range 1 ≤ day ≤ maxday, then fail.
Return year, month, and day.
Status: Last call for comments
A time consists of a specific time with no time-zone information, consisting of an hour, a minute, a second, and a fraction of a second.
A string is a valid time string representing an hour hour, a minute minute, and a second second if it consists of the following components in the given order:
The second component cannot be 60 or 61; leap seconds cannot be represented.
The rules to parse a time string are as follows. This will return either a time, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Parse a time component to obtain hour, minute, and second. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is not beyond the end of input, then fail.
Let time be the time with hour hour, minute minute, and second second.
Return time.
The rules to parse a time component, given an input string and a position, are as follows. This will return either an hour, a minute, and a second, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not exactly two characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the hour.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+003A COLON character, then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not exactly two characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the minute.
Let second be a string with the value "0".
If position is not beyond the end of input and the character at position is a U+003A COLON, then run these substeps:
Advance position to the next character in input.
If position is beyond the end of input, or at the last character in input, or if the next two characters in input starting at position are not two characters both in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), then fail.
Collect a sequence of characters that are either characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9) or U+002E FULL STOP characters. If the collected sequence has more than one U+002E FULL STOP characters, or if the last character in the sequence is a U+002E FULL STOP character, then fail. Otherwise, let the collected string be second instead of its previous value.
Interpret second as a base-ten number (possibly with a fractional part). Let second be that number instead of the string version.
If second is not a number in the range 0 ≤ second < 60, then fail.
Return hour, minute, and second.
Status: Last call for comments
A local date and time consists of a specific proleptic Gregorian date, consisting of a year, a month, and a day, and a time, consisting of an hour, a minute, a second, and a fraction of a second, but expressed without a time zone. [GREGORIAN]
A string is a valid local date and time string representing a date and time if it consists of the following components in the given order:
The rules to parse a local date and time string are as follows. This will return either a date and time, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Parse a date component to obtain year, month, and day. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+0054 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T character (T) then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
Parse a time component to obtain hour, minute, and second. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is not beyond the end of input, then fail.
Let date be the date with year year, month month, and day day.
Let time be the time with hour hour, minute minute, and second second.
Return date and time.
Status: Last call for comments
A global date and time consists of a specific proleptic Gregorian date, consisting of a year, a month, and a day, and a time, consisting of an hour, a minute, a second, and a fraction of a second, expressed with a time-zone offset, consisting of a signed number of hours and minutes. [GREGORIAN]
A string is a valid global date and time string representing a date, time, and a time-zone offset if it consists of the following components in the given order:
This format allows for time-zone offsets from -23:59 to +23:59. In practice, however, the range of offsets of actual time zones is -12:00 to +14:00, and the minutes component of offsets of actual time zones is always either 00, 30, or 45.
The following are some examples of dates written as valid global date and time strings.
0037-12-13T00:00Z"1979-10-14T12:00:00.001-04:00"8592-01-01T02:09+02:09"Several things are notable about these dates:
The best representation of the global date and time string datetime is the valid global date and time string representing datetime with the last character of the string not being a U+005A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z character (Z), even if the time zone is UTC, and with a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character (-) representing the sign of the time-zone offset when the time zone is UTC.
The rules to parse a global date and time string are as follows. This will return either a time in UTC, with associated time-zone offset information for round tripping or display purposes, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Parse a date component to obtain year, month, and day. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+0054 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T character (T) then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
Parse a time component to obtain hour, minute, and second. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is beyond the end of input, then fail.
Parse a time-zone offset component to obtain timezonehours and timezoneminutes. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If position is not beyond the end of input, then fail.
Let time be the moment in time at year year, month month, day day, hours hour, minute minute, second second, subtracting timezonehours hours and timezoneminutes minutes. That moment in time is a moment in the UTC time zone.
Let timezone be timezonehours hours and timezoneminutes minutes from UTC.
Return time and timezone.
The rules to parse a time-zone offset component, given an input string and a position, are as follows. This will return either time-zone hours and time-zone minutes, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
If the character at position is a U+005A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z character (Z), then:
Let timezonehours be 0.
Let timezoneminutes be 0.
Advance position to the next character in input.
Otherwise, if the character at position is either a U+002B PLUS SIGN (+) or a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (-), then:
If the character at position is a U+002B PLUS SIGN (+), let sign be "positive". Otherwise, it's a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS (-); let sign be "negative".
Advance position to the next character in input.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not exactly two characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the timezonehours.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+003A COLON character, then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not exactly two characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the timezoneminutes.
Otherwise, fail.
Return timezonehours and timezoneminutes.
Status: Last call for comments
A week consists of a week-year number and a week number representing a seven-day period starting on a Monday. Each week-year in this calendaring system has either 52 or 53 such seven-day periods, as defined below. The seven-day period starting on the Gregorian date Monday December 29th 1969 (1969-12-29) is defined as week number 1 in week-year 1970. Consecutive weeks are numbered sequentially. The week before the number 1 week in a week-year is the last week in the previous week-year, and vice versa. [GREGORIAN]
A week-year with a number year has 53 weeks if it corresponds to either a year year in the proleptic Gregorian calendar that has a Thursday as its first day (January 1st), or a year year in the proleptic Gregorian calendar that has a Wednesday as its first day (January 1st) and where year is a number divisible by 400, or a number divisible by 4 but not by 100. All other week-years have 52 weeks.
The week number of the last day of a week-year with 53 weeks is 53; the week number of the last day of a week-year with 52 weeks is 52.
The week-year number of a particular day can be different than the number of the year that contains that day in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The first week in a week-year y is the week that contains the first Thursday of the Gregorian year y.
A string is a valid week string representing a week-year year and week week if it consists of the following components in the given order:
The rules to parse a week string are as follows. This will return either a week-year number and week number, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not at least four characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the year.
If year is not a number greater than zero, then fail.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS character, then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
If position is beyond the end of input or if the character at position is not a U+0057 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER W character (W), then fail. Otherwise, move position forwards one character.
Collect a sequence of characters in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9). If the collected sequence is not exactly two characters long, then fail. Otherwise, interpret the resulting sequence as a base-ten integer. Let that number be the week.
Let maxweek be the week number of the last day of year year.
If week is not a number in the range 1 ≤ week ≤ maxweek, then fail.
If position is not beyond the end of input, then fail.
Return the week-year number year and the week number week.
Status: Last call for comments
A string is a valid date or time string if it is also one of the following:
A string is a valid date or time string in content if it consists of zero or more White_Space characters, followed by a valid date or time string, followed by zero or more further White_Space characters.
A string is a valid date string with optional time if it is also one of the following:
A string is a valid date string in content with optional time if it consists of zero or more White_Space characters, followed by a valid date string with optional time, followed by zero or more further White_Space characters.
The rules to parse a date or time string are as follows. The algorithm is invoked with a flag indicating if the in attribute variant or the in content variant is to be used. The algorithm will return either a date, a time, a global date and time, or nothing. If at any point the algorithm says that it "fails", this means that it is aborted at that point and returns nothing.
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
For the in content variant: skip White_Space characters.
Set start position to the same position as position.
Set the date present and time present flags to true.
Parse a date component to obtain year, month, and day. If this fails, then set the date present flag to false.
If date present is true, and position is not beyond the end of input, and the character at position is a U+0054 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T character (T), then advance position to the next character in input.
Otherwise, if date present is true, and either position is beyond the end of input or the character at position is not a U+0054 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T character (T), then set time present to false.
Otherwise, if date present is false, set position back to the same position as start position.
If the time present flag is true, then parse a time component to obtain hour, minute, and second. If this returns nothing, then fail.
If the date present and time present flags are both true, but position is beyond the end of input, then fail.
If the date present and time present flags are both true, parse a time-zone offset component to obtain timezonehours and timezoneminutes. If this returns nothing, then fail.
For the in content variant: skip White_Space characters.
If position is not beyond the end of input, then fail.
If the date present flag is true and the time present flag is false, then let date be the date with year year, month month, and day day, and return date.
Otherwise, if the time present flag is true and the date present flag is false, then let time be the time with hour hour, minute minute, and second second, and return time.
Otherwise, let time be the moment in time at year year, month month, day day, hours hour, minute minute, second second, subtracting timezonehours hours and timezoneminutes minutes, that moment in time being a moment in the UTC time zone; let timezone be timezonehours hours and timezoneminutes minutes from UTC; and return time and timezone.
Status: Awaiting implementation feedback
A simple color consists of three 8-bit numbers in the range 0..255, representing the red, green, and blue components of the color respectively, in the sRGB color space. [SRGB]
A string is a valid simple color if it is exactly seven characters long, and the first character is a U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character (#), and the remaining six characters are all in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to U+0046 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F, U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A to U+0066 LATIN SMALL LETTER F, with the first two digits representing the red component, the middle two digits representing the green component, and the last two digits representing the blue component, in hexadecimal.
A string is a valid lowercase simple color if it is a valid simple color and doesn't use any characters in the range U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to U+0046 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F.
The rules for parsing simple color values are as given in the following algorithm. When invoked, the steps must be followed in the order given, aborting at the first step that returns a value. This algorithm will return either a simple color or an error.
Let input be the string being parsed.
If input is not exactly seven characters long, then return an error.
If the first character in input is not a U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character (#), then return an error.
If the last six characters of input are not all in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to U+0046 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F, U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A to U+0066 LATIN SMALL LETTER F, then return an error.
Let result be a simple color.
Interpret the second and third characters as a hexadecimal number and let the result be the red component of result.
Interpret the fourth and fifth characters as a hexadecimal number and let the result be the green component of result.
Interpret the sixth and seventh characters as a hexadecimal number and let the result be the blue component of result.
Return result.
The rules for serializing simple color values given a simple color are as given in the following algorithm:
Let result be a string consisting of a single U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character (#).
Convert the red, green, and blue components in turn to two-digit hexadecimal numbers using the digits U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9) and U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A to U+0066 LATIN SMALL LETTER F, zero-padding if necessary, and append these numbers to result, in the order red, green, blue.
Return result, which will be a valid lowercase simple color.
Some obsolete legacy attributes parse colors in a more complicated manner, using the rules for parsing a legacy color value, which are given in the following algorithm. When invoked, the steps must be followed in the order given, aborting at the first step that returns a value. This algorithm will return either a simple color or an error.
Let input be the string being parsed.
If input is the empty string, then return an error.
Let keyword be a string with the same value as input.
Strip leading and trailing whitespace from keyword.
If keyword is an ASCII
case-insensitive match for the string "transparent", then return an error.
If keyword is an ASCII case-insensitive match for one of the keywords listed in the SVG color keywords section of the CSS3 Color specification, then return the simple color corresponding to that keyword. [CSSCOLOR]
CSS2 System Colors are not recognised.
If input is four characters long, and the first character in input is a U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character (#), and the last three characters of input are all in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to U+0046 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F, and U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A to U+0066 LATIN SMALL LETTER F, then run these substeps:
Let result be a simple color.
Interpret the second character of input as a hexadecimal digit; let the red component of result be the resulting number multiplied by 17.
Interpret the third character of input as a hexadecimal digit; let the green component of result be the resulting number multiplied by 17.
Interpret the fourth character of input as a hexadecimal digit; let the blue component of result be the resulting number multiplied by 17.
Return result.
Replace any characters in input that
have a Unicode code point greater than U+FFFF (i.e. any characters
that are not in the basic multilingual plane) with the
two-character string "00".
If input is longer than 128 characters, truncate input, leaving only the first 128 characters.
If the first character in input is a U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character (#), remove it.
Replace any character in input that is not in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), U+0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A to U+0046 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F, and U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A to U+0066 LATIN SMALL LETTER F with the character U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0).
While input's length is zero or not a multiple of three, append a U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) character to input.
Split input into three strings of equal length, to obtain three components. Let length be the length of those components (one third the length of input).
If length is greater than 8, then remove the leading length-8 characters in each component, and let length be 8.
While length is greater than two and the first character in each component is a U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) character, remove that character and reduce length by one.
If length is still greater than two, truncate each component, leaving only the first two characters in each.
Let result be a simple color.
Interpret the first component as a hexadecimal number; let the red component of result be the resulting number.
Interpret the second component as a hexadecimal number; let the green component of result be the resulting number.
Interpret the third component as a hexadecimal number; let the blue component of result be the resulting number.
Return result.
Status: Last call for comments
A set of space-separated tokens is a string containing zero or more words separated by one or more space characters, where words consist of any string of one or more characters, none of which are space characters.
A string containing a set of space-separated tokens may have leading or trailing space characters.
An unordered set of unique space-separated tokens is a set of space-separated tokens where none of the words are duplicated.
An ordered set of unique space-separated tokens is a set of space-separated tokens where none of the words are duplicated but where the order of the tokens is meaningful.
Sets of space-separated tokens sometimes have a defined set of allowed values. When a set of allowed values is defined, the tokens must all be from that list of allowed values; other values are non-conforming. If no such set of allowed values is provided, then all values are conforming.
When a user agent has to split a string on spaces, it must use the following algorithm:
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let tokens be a list of tokens, initially empty.
While position is not past the end of input:
Collect a sequence of characters that are not space characters.
Add the string collected in the previous step to tokens.
Return tokens.
When a user agent has to remove a token from a string, it must use the following algorithm:
Let input be the string being modified.
Let token be the token being removed. It will not contain any space characters.
Let output be the output string, initially empty.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Loop: If position is beyond the end of input, abort these steps.
If the character at position is a space character:
Append the character at position to the end of output.
Advance position so it points at the next character in input.
Return to the step labeled loop.
Otherwise, the character at position is the first character of a token. Collect a sequence of characters that are not space characters, and let that be s.
If s is exactly equal to token, then:
Skip whitespace (in input).
Remove any space characters currently at the end of output.
If position is not past the end of input, and output is not the empty string, append a single U+0020 SPACE character at the end of output.
Otherwise, append s to the end of output.
Return to the step labeled loop.
This causes any occurrences of the token to be removed from the string, and any spaces that were surrounding the token to be collapsed to a single space, except at the start and end of the string, where such spaces are removed.
Status: Last call for comments
A set of comma-separated tokens is a string containing zero or more tokens each separated from the next by a single U+002C COMMA character (,), where tokens consist of any string of zero or more characters, neither beginning nor ending with space characters, nor containing any U+002C COMMA characters (,), and optionally surrounded by space characters.
For instance, the string " a ,b,,d d " consists of four
tokens: "a", "b", the empty string, and "d d". Leading and
trailing whitespace around each token doesn't count as part of the
token, and the empty string can be a token.
Sets of comma-separated tokens sometimes have further restrictions on what consists a valid token. When such restrictions are defined, the tokens must all fit within those restrictions; other values are non-conforming. If no such restrictions are specified, then all values are conforming.
When a user agent has to split a string on commas, it must use the following algorithm:
Let input be the string being parsed.
Let position be a pointer into input, initially pointing at the start of the string.
Let tokens be a list of tokens, initially empty.
Token: If position is past the end of input, jump to the last step.
Collect a sequence of characters that are not U+002C COMMA characters (,). Let s be the resulting sequence (which might be the empty string).
Remove any leading or trailing sequence of space characters from s.
Add s to tokens.
If position is not past the end of input, then the character at position is a U+002C COMMA character (,); advance position past that character.
Jump back to the step labeled token.
Return tokens.
Status: Last call for comments
A valid hash-name reference to an element of type type is a string consisting of a U+0023 NUMBER SIGN
character (#) followed by a string which exactly matches the value
of the name attribute of an element with type
type in the document.
The rules for parsing a hash-name reference to an element of type type are as follows:
If the string being parsed does not contain a U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character, or if the first such character in the string is the last character in the string, then return null and abort these steps.
Let s be the string from the character immediately after the first U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character in the string being parsed up to the end of that string.
Return the first element of type type
that has an id attribute whose value
is a case-sensitive match for s or
a name attribute whose value is a
compatibility caseless match for s.
Status: Last call for comments
A string is a valid media query if it matches the
media_query_list production of the Media
Queries specification. [MQ]
A string matches the environment of the user if it is the empty string, a string consisting of only space characters, or is a media query that matches the user's environment according to the definitions given in the Media Queries specification. [MQ]
Status: Last call for comments. ISSUE-56 (urls-webarch) blocks progress to Last Call
Status: Last call for comments
A URL is a string used to identify a resource.
A URL is a valid URL if at least one of the following conditions holds:
The URL is a valid IRI reference and it has no query component. [RFC3987]
The URL is a valid IRI reference and its query component contains no unescaped non-ASCII characters. [RFC3987]
The URL is a valid IRI reference and the character encoding of
the URL's Document is UTF-8 or UTF-16. [RFC3987]
A string is a valid non-empty URL if it is a valid URL but it is not the empty string.
A string is a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces if, after stripping leading and trailing whitespace from it, it is a valid URL.
A string is a valid non-empty URL potentially surrounded by spaces if, after stripping leading and trailing whitespace from it, it is a valid non-empty URL.
To parse a URL url into its component parts, the user agent must use the parse an address algorithm defined by the IRI specification. [RFC3987]
Parsing a URL can fail. If it does not, then it results in the following components, again as defined by the IRI specification:
To resolve a URL to an absolute URL relative to either another absolute URL or an element, the user agent must use the following steps. Resolving a URL can result in an error, in which case the URL is not resolvable.
Let url be the URL being resolved.
Let encoding be determined as follows:
Document, and the URL character
encoding is the document's character encoding.If encoding is a UTF-16 encoding, then change the value of encoding to UTF-8.
If the algorithm was invoked with an absolute URL to use as the base URL, let base be that absolute URL.
Otherwise, let base be the base URI of
the element, as defined by the XML Base specification, with
the base URI of the document entity being defined as the
document base URL of the Document that
owns the element. [XMLBASE]
For the purposes of the XML Base specification, user agents
must act as if all Document objects represented XML
documents.
It is possible for xml:base attributes to be present
even in HTML fragments, as such attributes can be added
dynamically using script. (Such scripts would not be conforming,
however, as xml:base attributes
are not allowed in HTML documents.)
The document base URL of a Document
object is the absolute URL obtained by running these
substeps:
Let fallback base url be the document's address.
If fallback base url is
about:blank, and the Document's
browsing context has a creator browsing
context, then let fallback base url
be the document base URL of the creator
Document instead.
If there is no base element that is both a
child of the head element and has an
href attribute, then the
document base URL is fallback base
url.
Otherwise, let url be the value of the
href attribute of the first
such element.
Resolve url relative to fallback base
url (thus, the base href attribute isn't affected by
xml:base attributes).
The document base URL is the result of the previous step if it was successful; otherwise it is fallback base url.
Return the result of applying the resolve an address algorithm defined by the IRI specification to resolve url relative to base using encoding encoding. [RFC3987]
A URL is an absolute URL if resolving it results in the same output regardless of what it is resolved relative to, and that output is not a failure.
An absolute URL is a hierarchical URL if, when resolved and then parsed, there is a character immediately after the <scheme> component and it is a U+002F SOLIDUS character (/).
An absolute URL is an authority-based URL if, when resolved and then parsed, there are two characters immediately after the <scheme> component and they are both U+002F SOLIDUS characters (//).
This specification defines the URL
about:legacy-compat as a reserved, though
unresolvable, about: URI, for use in DOCTYPEs in HTML
documents when needed for compatibility with XML tools. [ABOUT]
This specification defines the URL
about:srcdoc as a reserved, though
unresolvable, about: URI, that is used as
the document's address of iframe srcdoc documents. [ABOUT]
The term "URL" in this specification is used in a manner distinct from the precise technical meaning it is given in RFC 3986. Readers familiar with that RFC will find it easier to read this specification if they pretend the term "URL" as used herein is really called something else altogether. This is a willful violation of RFC 3986. [RFC3986]
Status: Last call for comments
When an xml:base attribute
changes, the attribute's element, and all descendant elements, are
affected by a base URL change.
When a document's document base URL changes, all elements in that document are affected by a base URL change.
When an element is moved from one document to another, if the two documents have different base URLs, then that element and all its descendants are affected by a base URL change.
When an element is affected by a base URL change, it must act as described in the following list:
If the absolute URL identified by the hyperlink is
being shown to the user, or if any data derived from that URL is
affecting the display, then the href attribute should be re-resolved relative to the element
and the UI updated appropriately.
For example, the CSS :link/:visited pseudo-classes might have
been affected.
q, blockquote,
section, article, ins, or
del element with a cite
attributeIf the absolute URL identified by the cite attribute is being shown to the user, or if
any data derived from that URL is affecting the display, then the
URL should be re-resolved relative to the element and the UI updated
appropriately.
The element is not directly affected.
Changing the base URL doesn't affect the image
displayed by img elements, although subsequent
accesses of the src IDL attribute
from script will return a new absolute URL that might
no longer correspond to the image being shown.
Status: Last call for comments
An interface that has a complement of URL decomposition IDL attributes will have seven attributes with the following definitions:
attribute DOMString protocol;
attribute DOMString host;
attribute DOMString hostname;
attribute DOMString port;
attribute DOMString pathname;
attribute DOMString search;
attribute DOMString hash;protocol [ = value ]Returns the current scheme of the underlying URL.
Can be set, to change the underlying URL's scheme.
host [ = value ]Returns the current host and port (if it's not the default port) in the underlying URL.
Can be set, to change the underlying URL's host and port.
The host and the port are separated by a colon. The port part, if omitted, will be assumed to be the current scheme's default port.
hostname [ = value ]Returns the current host in the underlying URL.
Can be set, to change the underlying URL's host.
port [ = value ]Returns the current port in the underlying URL.
Can be set, to change the underlying URL's port.
pathname [ = value ]Returns the current path in the underlying URL.
Can be set, to change the underlying URL's path.
search [ = value ]Returns the current query component in the underlying URL.
Can be set, to change the underlying URL's query component.
hash [ = value ]Returns the current fragment identifier in the underlying URL.
Can be set, to change the underlying URL's fragment identifier.
The attributes defined to be URL decomposition IDL attributes must act as described for the attributes with the same corresponding names in this section.
In addition, an interface with a complement of URL decomposition IDL attributes will define an input, which is a URL that the attributes act on, and a common setter action, which is a set of steps invoked when any of the attributes' setters are invoked.
The seven URL decomposition IDL attributes have similar requirements.
On getting, if the input is an absolute URL that fulfills the condition given in the "getter condition" column corresponding to the attribute in the table below, the user agent must return the part of the input URL given in the "component" column, with any prefixes specified in the "prefix" column appropriately added to the start of the string and any suffixes specified in the "suffix" column appropriately added to the end of the string. Otherwise, the attribute must return the empty string.
On setting, the new value must first be mutated as described by the "setter preprocessor" column, then mutated by %-escaping any characters in the new value that are not valid in the relevant component as given by the "component" column. Then, if the input is an absolute URL and the resulting new value fulfills the condition given in the "setter condition" column, the user agent must make a new string output by replacing the component of the URL given by the "component" column in the input URL with the new value; otherwise, the user agent must let output be equal to the input. Finally, the user agent must invoke the common setter action with the value of output.
When replacing a component in the URL, if the component is part of an optional group in the URL syntax consisting of a character followed by the component, the component (including its prefix character) must be included even if the new value is the empty string.
The previous paragraph applies in particular to the
":" before a <port> component, the "?" before a <query> component, and the "#" before a <fragment> component.
For the purposes of the above definitions, URLs must be parsed using the URL parsing rules defined in this specification.
| Attribute | Component | Getter Condition | Prefix | Suffix | Setter Preprocessor | Setter Condition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
protocol
| <scheme> | — | — | U+003A COLON (:) | Remove all trailing U+003A COLON characters (:) | The new value is not the empty string |
host
| <hostport> | input is an authority-based URL | — | — | — | The new value is not the empty string and input is an authority-based URL |
hostname
| <host> | input is an authority-based URL | — | — | Remove all leading U+002F SOLIDUS characters (/) | The new value is not the empty string and input is an authority-based URL |
port
| <port> | input is an authority-based URL, and contained a <port> component (possibly an empty one) | — | — | Remove all characters in the new value from the first that is not in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9), if any. Remove any leading U+0030 DIGIT ZERO characters (0) in the new value. If the resulting string is empty, set it to a single U+0030 DIGIT ZERO character (0). | input is an authority-based URL, and the new value, when interpreted as a base-ten integer, is less than or equal to 65535 |
pathname
| <path> | input is a hierarchical URL | — | — | If it has no leading U+002F SOLIDUS character (/), prepend a U+002F SOLIDUS character (/) to the new value | input is hierarchical |
search
| <query> | input is a hierarchical URL, and contained a <query> component (possibly an empty one) | U+003F QUESTION MARK (?) | — | Remove one leading U+003F QUESTION MARK character (?), if any | input is a hierarchical URL |
hash
| <fragment> | input contained a non-empty <fragment> component | U+0023 NUMBER SIGN (#) | — | Remove one leading U+0023 NUMBER SIGN character (#), if any | — |
The table below demonstrates how the getter condition for search results in different results
depending on the exact original syntax of the URL:
| Input URL | search value
| Explanation |
|---|---|---|
http://example.com/
| empty string | No <query> component in input URL. |
http://example.com/?
| ?
| There is a <query> component, but it is empty. The question mark in the resulting value is the prefix. |
http://example.com/?test
| ?test
| The <query> component has the value "test".
|
http://example.com/?test#
| ?test
| The (empty) <fragment> component is not part of the <query> component. |
Status: Last call for comments
When a user agent is to fetch a resource or URL, optionally from an origin origin, and optionally with a synchronous flag, a manual redirect flag, a force same-origin flag, and/or a block cookies flag, the following steps must be run. (When a URL is to be fetched, the URL identifies a resource to be obtained.)
Generate the address of the resource from which Request-URIs
are obtained as required by HTTP for the Referer (sic) header from the
document's current address of the appropriate
Document as given by the following list. [HTTP]
Document.Remove any <fragment> component from the generated address of the resource from which Request-URIs are obtained.
If the origin of the appropriate
Document is not a scheme/host/port tuple, then the
Referer (sic) header must be
omitted, regardless of its value.
If the algorithm was not invoked with the synchronous flag, perform the remaining steps asynchronously.
This is the main step.
If the resource is identified by an absolute URL,
and the resource is to be obtained using an idempotent action
(such as an HTTP GET or
equivalent), and it is already being downloaded for other
reasons (e.g. another invocation of this algorithm), and this
request would be identical to the previous one (e.g. same Accept and Origin headers), and the user agent is
configured such that it is to reuse the data from the existing
download instead of initiating a new one, then use the results of
the existing download instead of starting a new one.
Otherwise, at a time convenient to the user and the user agent,
download (or otherwise obtain) the resource, applying the
semantics of the relevant specifications (e.g. performing an HTTP
GET or POST operation, or reading the file from disk, dereferencing javascript: URLs,
etc).
For the purposes of the Referer (sic) header, use the
address of the resource from which Request-URIs are
obtained generated in the earlier step.
For the purposes of the Origin
header, if the fetching algorithm was
explicitly initiated from an origin, then the origin that initiated the HTTP request is origin. Otherwise, this is a request from
a "privacy-sensitive" context. [ORIGIN]
If the resource is identified by the URL
about:blank, then the resource is
immediately available and consists of the empty string, with no
metadata.
If the algorithm was not invoked with the block cookies flag, and there are cookies to be set, then the user agent must run the following substeps:
Wait until ownership of the storage mutex can be taken by this instance of the fetching algorithm.
Take ownership of the storage mutex.
Update the cookies. [COOKIES]
Release the storage mutex so that it is once again free.
If the fetched resource is an HTTP redirect or equivalent, then:
Abort these steps and return failure from this algorithm, as if the remote host could not be contacted.
Continue, using the fetched resource (the redirect) as the result of the algorithm.
First, apply any relevant requirements for redirects (such as showing any appropriate prompts). Then, redo main step, but using the target of the redirect as the resource to fetch, rather than the original resource.
The HTTP specification requires that 301, 302, and 307 redirects, when applied to methods other than the safe methods, not be followed without user confirmation. That would be an appropriate prompt for the purposes of the requirement in the paragraph above. [HTTP]
If the algorithm was not invoked with the synchronous flag: When the resource is available, or if there is an error of some description, queue a task that uses the resource as appropriate. If the resource can be processed incrementally, as, for instance, with a progressively interlaced JPEG or an HTML file, additional tasks may be queued to process the data as it is downloaded. The task source for these tasks is the networking task source.
Otherwise, return the resource or error information to the calling algorithm.
If the user agent can determine the actual length of the resource
being fetched for an instance of this
algorithm, and if that length is finite, then that length is the
file's size. Otherwise, the
subject of the algorithm (that is, the resource being fetched) has
no known size. (For
example, the HTTP Content-Length header might
provide this information.)
The user agent must also keep track of the number of bytes downloaded for each instance of this algorithm. This number must exclude any out-of-band metadata, such as HTTP headers.
The application cache processing model introduces some changes to the networking model to handle the returning of cached resources.
The navigation processing model handles redirects itself, overriding the redirection handling that would be done by the fetching algorithm.
Whether the type sniffing rules apply to the fetched resource depends on the algorithm that invokes the rules — they are not always applicable.
Status: Last call for comments
User agents can implement a variety of transfer protocols, but this specification mostly defines behavior in terms of HTTP. [HTTP]
The HTTP GET method is equivalent to the default retrieval action of the protocol. For example, RETR in FTP. Such actions are idempotent and safe, in HTTP terms.
The HTTP response codes are equivalent to statuses in other protocols that have the same basic meanings. For example, a "file not found" error is equivalent to a 404 code, a server error is equivalent to a 5xx code, and so on.
The HTTP headers are equivalent to fields in other protocols that have the same basic meaning. For example, the HTTP authentication headers are equivalent to the authentication aspects of the FTP protocol.
Status: Last call for comments
Anything in this specification that refers to HTTP also applies
to HTTP-over-TLS, as represented by URLs
representing the https scheme.
User agents should report certificate errors to the user and must either refuse to download resources sent with erroneous certificates or must act as if such resources were in fact served with no encryption.
User agents should warn the user that there is a potential problem whenever the user visits a page that the user has previously visited, if the page uses less secure encryption on the second visit.
Not doing so can result in users not noticing man-in-the-middle attacks.
If a user connects to a server with a self-signed certificate, the user agent could allow the connection but just act as if there had been no encryption. If the user agent instead allowed the user to override the problem and then displayed the page as if it was fully and safely encrypted, the user could be easily tricked into accepting man-in-the-middle connections.
If a user connects to a server with full encryption, but the page then refers to an external resource that has an expired certificate, then the user agent will act as if the resource was unavailable, possibly also reporting the problem to the user. If the user agent instead allowed the resource to be used, then an attacker could just look for "secure" sites that used resources from a different host and only apply man-in-the-middle attacks to that host, for example taking over scripts in the page.
If a user bookmarks a site that uses a CA-signed certificate, and then later revisits that site directly but the site has started using a self-signed certificate, the user agent could warn the user that a man-in-the-middle attack is likely underway, instead of simply acting as if the page was not encrypted.
Status: Last call for comments
The Content-Type metadata of a resource must be obtained and interpreted in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Media Type Sniffing specification. [MIMESNIFF]
The sniffed type of a resource must be found in a manner consistent with the requirements given in the Media Type Sniffing specification for finding the sniffed-type of the relevant sequence of octets. [MIMESNIFF]
The rules for sniffing images specifically and the rules for distingushing if a resource is text or binary are also defined in the Media Type Sniffing specification. Both sets of rules return a MIME type as their result. [MIMESNIFF]
It is imperative that the rules in the Media Type Sniffing specification be followed exactly. When a user agent uses different heuristics for content type detection than the server expects, security problems can occur. For more details, see the Media Type Sniffing specification. [MIMESNIFF]
The algorithm for extracting an encoding from a Content-Type, given a string s, is as follows. It either returns an encoding or nothing.
Find the first seven characters in s
that are an ASCII case-insensitive match for the word
"charset". If no such match is found, return
nothing.
Skip any U+0009, U+000A, U+000C, U+000D, or U+0020
characters that immediately follow the word "charset" (there might not be any).
If the next character is not a U+003D EQUALS SIGN ('='), return nothing and abort these steps.
Skip any U+0009, U+000A, U+000C, U+000D, or U+0020 characters that immediately follow the equals sign (there might not be any).
Process the next character as follows:
This requirement is a willful violation of the HTTP specification, motivated by the need for backwards compatibility with legacy content. [HTTP]
Status: Last call for comments
Status: Last call for comments
Some IDL attributes are defined to reflect a particular content attribute. This means that on getting, the IDL attribute returns the current value of the content attribute, and on setting, the IDL attribute changes the value of the content attribute to the given value.
In general, on getting, if the content attribute is not present, the IDL attribute must act as if the content attribute's value is the empty string; and on setting, if the content attribute is not present, it must first be added.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a DOMString
attribute whose content attribute is defined to contain a
URL, then on getting, the IDL attribute must resolve the value of the content
attribute relative to the element and return the resulting
absolute URL if that was successful, or the empty
string otherwise; and on setting, must set the content attribute to
the specified literal value. If the content attribute is absent, the
IDL attribute must return the default value, if the content
attribute has one, or else the empty string.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a DOMString
attribute whose content attribute is defined to contain one or more
URLs, then on getting, the IDL attribute
must split the content
attribute on spaces and return the concatenation of resolving each token URL to an
absolute URL relative to the element, with a single
U+0020 SPACE character between each URL, ignoring any tokens that
did not resolve successfully. If the content attribute is absent,
the IDL attribute must return the default value, if the content
attribute has one, or else the empty string. On setting, the IDL
attribute must set the content attribute to the specified literal
value.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a DOMString whose
content attribute is an enumerated attribute, and the
IDL attribute is limited to only known values, then, on
getting, the IDL attribute must return the conforming value
associated with the state the attribute is in (in its canonical
case), or the empty string if the attribute is in a state that has
no associated keyword value; and on setting, if the new value is an
ASCII case-insensitive match for one of the keywords
given for that attribute, then the content attribute must be set to
the conforming value associated with the state that the attribute
would be in if set to the given new value, otherwise, if the new
value is the empty string, then the content attribute must be
removed, otherwise, the content attribute must be set to the given
new value.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a DOMString but
doesn't fall into any of the above categories, then the getting and
setting must be done in a transparent, case-preserving manner.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a boolean
attribute, then on getting the IDL attribute must return true if the
content attribute is set, and false if it is absent. On setting, the
content attribute must be removed if the IDL attribute is set to
false, and must be set to the empty string if the IDL attribute is
set to true. (This corresponds to the rules for boolean content attributes.)
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a signed integer type
(long) then, on getting, the content attribute must be
parsed according to the rules for parsing signed integers, and if that is
successful, and the value is in the range of the IDL attribute's
type, the resulting value must be returned. If, on the other hand,
it fails or returns an out of range value, or if the attribute is
absent, then the default value must be returned instead, or 0 if
there is no default value. On setting, the given value must be
converted to the shortest possible string representing the number as
a valid integer and then that string must be used as
the new content attribute value.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a signed integer type
(long) that is limited to only non-negative
numbers then, on getting, the content attribute must be parsed
according to the rules for parsing non-negative
integers, and if that is successful, and the value is in the
range of the IDL attribute's type, the resulting value must be
returned. If, on the other hand, it fails or returns an out of range
value, or if the attribute is absent, the default value must be
returned instead, or −1 if there is no default value. On
setting, if the value is negative, the user agent must fire an
INDEX_SIZE_ERR exception. Otherwise, the given value
must be converted to the shortest possible string representing the
number as a valid non-negative integer and then that
string must be used as the new content attribute value.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is an unsigned integer
type (unsigned long) then, on getting, the content
attribute must be parsed according to the rules for parsing
non-negative integers, and if that is successful, and the
value is in the range of the IDL attribute's type, the resulting
value must be returned. If, on the other hand, it fails or returns
an out of range value, or if the attribute is absent, the default
value must be returned instead, or 0 if there is no default
value. On setting, the given value must be converted to the shortest
possible string representing the number as a valid
non-negative integer and then that string must be used as the
new content attribute value.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is an unsigned integer type
(unsigned long) that is limited to only
non-negative numbers greater than zero, then the behavior is
similar to the previous case, but zero is not allowed. On getting,
the content attribute must first be parsed according to the
rules for parsing non-negative integers, and if that is
successful, and the value is in the range of the IDL attribute's
type, the resulting value must be returned. If, on the other hand,
it fails or returns an out of range value, or if the attribute is
absent, the default value must be returned instead, or 1 if there is
no default value. On setting, if the value is zero, the user agent
must fire an INDEX_SIZE_ERR exception. Otherwise, the
given value must be converted to the shortest possible string
representing the number as a valid non-negative integer
and then that string must be used as the new content attribute
value.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is a floating point number type
(double), then, on getting, the content attribute must
be parsed according to the rules for parsing floating point
number values, and if that is successful, the resulting value
must be returned. If, on the other hand, it fails, or if the
attribute is absent, the default value must be returned instead, or
0.0 if there is no default value. On setting, the given value must
be converted to the best representation of the number as a
floating point number and then that string must be used as
the new content attribute value.
The values Infinity and Not-a-Number (NaN) values throw an exception on setting, as defined earlier.
If a reflecting IDL attribute is of the type
DOMTokenList or DOMSettableTokenList, then
on getting it must return a DOMTokenList or
DOMSettableTokenList object (as appropriate) whose
underlying string is the element's corresponding content
attribute. When the object mutates its underlying string, the
content attribute must itself be immediately mutated. When the
attribute is absent, then the string represented by the object is
the empty string; when the object mutates this empty string, the
user agent must add the corresponding content attribute, with its
value set to the value it would have been set to after mutating the
empty string. The same DOMTokenList or
DOMSettableTokenList object must be returned every time
for each attribute.
If an element with no attributes has its element.classList.remove()
method invoked, the underlying string won't be changed, since the
result of removing any token from the empty string is still the
empty string. However, if the element.classList.add() method is
then invoked, a class attribute
will be added to the element with the value of the token to be
added.
If a reflecting IDL attribute has the type
HTMLElement, or an interface that descends from
HTMLElement, then, on getting, it must run the
following algorithm (stopping at the first point where a value is
returned):
document.getElementById() method
would find when called on the content attribute's document if it
was passed as its argument the current value of the corresponding
content attribute.On setting, if the given element has an id attribute, then the content attribute must
be set to the value of that id
attribute. Otherwise, the IDL attribute must be set to the empty
string.
Status: Last call for comments
The HTMLCollection, HTMLAllCollection,
HTMLFormControlsCollection,
HTMLOptionsCollection, and
HTMLPropertiesCollection interfaces represent various
lists of DOM nodes. Collectively, objects implementing these
interfaces are called collections.
When a collection is created, a filter and a root are associated with the collection.
For example, when the HTMLCollection
object for the document.images attribute is
created, it is associated with a filter that selects only
img elements, and rooted at the root of the
document.
The collection then represents a live view of the subtree rooted at the collection's root, containing only nodes that match the given filter. The view is linear. In the absence of specific requirements to the contrary, the nodes within the collection must be sorted in tree order.
The rows list is
not in tree order.
An attribute that returns a collection must return the same object every time it is retrieved.
Status: Last call for comments
The HTMLCollection interface represents a generic
collection of elements.
interface HTMLCollection {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
caller getter object item(in unsigned long index); // only returns Element
caller getter object namedItem(in DOMString name); // only returns Element
};lengthReturns the number of elements in the collection.
item(index)Returns the item with index index from the collection. The items are sorted in tree order.
Returns null if index is out of range.
namedItem(name)Returns the first item with ID or name name from the collection.
Returns null if no element with that ID or name could be found.
Only a, applet, area,
embed, form, frame,
frameset, iframe, img, and
object elements can have a name for the purpose of
this method; their name is given by the value of their name attribute.
The object's indices of the supported indexed properties are the numbers in the range zero to one less than the number of nodes represented by the collection. If there are no such elements, then there are no supported indexed properties.
The length
attribute must return the number of nodes represented by the
collection.
The item(index) method must return the indexth node in the collection. If there is no indexth node in the collection, then the method must
return null.
The names of the supported named properties consist
of the values of the name attributes of each
a, applet, area,
embed, form, frame,
frameset, iframe, img, and
object element represented by the
collection with a name attribute, plus
the list of IDs that the elements represented by the
collection have.
The namedItem(key) method must return the first node
in the collection that matches the following requirements:
a, applet,
area, embed, form,
frame, frameset, iframe,
img, or object element with a name attribute equal to key,
or,If no such elements are found, then the method must return null.
Status: Last call for comments
The HTMLAllCollection interface represents a generic
collection of elements just like
HTMLCollection, with the exception that its namedItem() method
returns an HTMLAllCollection object when there are
multiple matching elements.
interface HTMLAllCollection : HTMLCollection {
// inherits length and item()
caller getter object namedItem(in DOMString name); // overrides inherited namedItem()
HTMLAllCollection tags(in DOMString tagName);
};lengthReturns the number of elements in the collection.
item(index)Returns the item with index index from the collection. The items are sorted in tree order.
Returns null if index is out of range.
namedItem(name)namedItem(name)Returns the item with ID or name name from the collection.
If there are multiple matching items, then an HTMLAllCollection object containing all those elements is returned.
Returns null if no element with that ID or name could be found.
Only a, applet, area,
embed, form, frame,
frameset, iframe, img, and
object elements can have a name for the purpose of
this method; their name is given by the value of their name attribute.
tags(tagName)Returns a collection that is a filtered view of the current collection, containing only elements with the given tag name.
The object's indices of the supported indexed
properties and names of the supported named
properties are as defined for HTMLCollection
objects.
The namedItem(key) method must act according to the
following algorithm:
Let collection be an
HTMLAllCollection object rooted at the same node as
the HTMLAllCollection object on which the method was
invoked, whose filter matches only only elements that already
match the filter of the HTMLAllCollection object on
which the method was invoked and that are either:
The tags(tagName) method must return an
HTMLAllCollection rooted at the same node as the
HTMLAllCollection object on which the method was
invoked, whose filter matches only HTML elements whose
local name is the tagName argument and that
already match the filter of the HTMLAllCollection
object on which the method was invoked. In HTML
documents, the argument must first be converted to
ASCII lowercase.
Status: Last call for comments
The HTMLFormControlsCollection interface represents
a collection of listed elements in form
and fieldset elements.
interface HTMLFormControlsCollection : HTMLCollection {
// inherits length and item()
caller getter object namedItem(in DOMString name); // overrides inherited namedItem()
};
interface RadioNodeList : NodeList {
attribute DOMString value;
};lengthReturns the number of elements in the collection.
item(index)Returns the item with index index from the collection. The items are sorted in tree order.
Returns null if index is out of range.
namedItem(name)namedItem(name)Returns the item with ID or name name from the collection.
If there are multiple matching items, then a RadioNodeList object containing all those elements is returned.
Returns null if no element with that ID or name could be found.
Returns the value of the first checked radio button represented by the object.
Can be set, to check the first radio button with the given value represented by the object.
The object's indices of the supported indexed
properties are as defined for HTMLCollection
objects.
The names of the supported named properties consist
of the values of all the id and name attributes of all the elements
represented by the collection.
The namedItem(name) method must act according to the
following algorithm:
id attribute or a name attribute equal to name, then return that node and stop the
algorithm.id attribute or a name attribute equal to name, then return null and stop the algorithm.RadioNodeList object
representing a live view of the
HTMLFormControlsCollection object, further filtered so
that the only nodes in the RadioNodeList object are
those that have either an id attribute
or a name attribute equal to name. The nodes in the RadioNodeList
object must be sorted in tree order.RadioNodeList object.Members of the RadioNodeList interface inherited
from the NodeList interface must behave as they would
on a NodeList object.
The value
IDL attribute on the RadioNodeList object, on getting,
must return the value returned by running the following steps:
Let element be the first element in
tree order represented by the
RadioNodeList object that is an input
element whose type attribute
is in the Radio Button
state and whose checkedness
is true. Otherwise, let it be null.
If element is null, or if it is an
element with no value
attribute, return the empty string.
Otherwise, return the value of element's
value attribute.
On setting, the value IDL attribute must run
the following steps:
Let element be the first element in
tree order represented by the
RadioNodeList object that is an input
element whose type attribute
is in the Radio Button
state and whose value content
attribute is present and equal to the new value, if any. Otherwise,
let it be null.
If element is not null, then set its checkedness to true.
Status: Last call for comments
The HTMLOptionsCollection interface represents a
list of option elements. It is always rooted on a
select element and has attributes and methods that
manipulate that element's descendants.
interface HTMLOptionsCollection : HTMLCollection {
// inherits item()
attribute unsigned long length; // overrides inherited length
caller getter object namedItem(in DOMString name); // overrides inherited namedItem()
void add(in HTMLElement element, in optional HTMLElement before);
void add(in HTMLElement element, in long before);
void remove(in long index);
};length [ = value ]Returns the number of elements in the collection.
When set to a smaller number, truncates the number of option elements in the corresponding container.
When set to a greater number, adds new blank option elements to that container.
item(index)Returns the item with index index from the collection. The items are sorted in tree order.
Returns null if index is out of range.
namedItem(name)namedItem(name)Returns the item with ID or name name from the collection.
If there are multiple matching items, then a NodeList object containing all those elements is returned.
Returns null if no element with that ID could be found.
add(element [, before ] )Inserts element before the node given by before.
The before argument can be a number, in which case element is inserted before the item with that number, or an element from the collection, in which case element is inserted before that element.
If before is omitted, null, or a number out of range, then element will be added at the end of the list.
This method will throw a HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR
exception if element is an ancestor of the
element into which it is to be inserted. If element is not an option or
optgroup element, then the method does nothing.
The object's indices of the supported indexed
properties are as defined for HTMLCollection
objects.
On getting, the length
attribute must return the number of nodes represented by the
collection.
On setting, the behavior depends on whether the new value is
equal to, greater than, or less than the number of nodes
represented by the collection at that time. If the
number is the same, then setting the attribute must do nothing. If
the new value is greater, then n new
option elements with no attributes and no child nodes
must be appended to the select element on which the
HTMLOptionsCollection is rooted, where n is the difference between the two numbers (new
value minus old value). Mutation events must be fired as if a
DocumentFragment containing the new option
elements had been inserted. If the new value is lower, then the
last n nodes in the collection must be removed
from their parent nodes, where n is the
difference between the two numbers (old value minus new value).
Setting length never removes
or adds any optgroup elements, and never adds new
children to existing optgroup elements (though it can
remove children from them).
The names of the supported named properties consist
of the values of all the id and name attributes of all the elements
represented by the collection.
The namedItem(name) method must act according to the
following algorithm:
id attribute or a name attribute equal to name, then return that node and stop the
algorithm.id attribute or a name attribute equal to name, then return null and stop the algorithm.NodeList object
representing a live view of the
HTMLOptionsCollection object, further filtered so that
the only nodes in the NodeList object are those that
have either an id attribute or a name attribute equal to name. The nodes in the NodeList object
must be sorted in tree order.NodeList object.The add(element, before)
method must act according to the following algorithm:
If element is not an option
or optgroup element, then return and abort these
steps.
If element is an ancestor of the
select element on which the
HTMLOptionsCollection is rooted, then throw a
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR exception.
If before is an element, but that
element isn't a descendant of the select element on
which the HTMLOptionsCollection is rooted, then throw
a NOT_FOUND_ERR exception.
If element and before are the same element, then return and abort these steps.
If before is a node, then let reference be that node. Otherwise, if before is an integer, and there is a beforeth node in the collection, let reference be that node. Otherwise, let reference be null.
If reference is not null, let parent be the parent node of reference. Otherwise, let parent
be the select element on which the
HTMLOptionsCollection is rooted.
Act as if the DOM Core insertBefore() method was
invoked on the parent node, with element as the first argument and reference as the second argument.
The remove(index) method must act according to
the following algorithm:
If the number of nodes represented by the collection is zero, abort these steps.
If index is not a number greater than or equal to 0 and less than the number of nodes represented by the collection, let element be the first element in the collection. Otherwise, let element be the indexth element in the collection.
Remove element from its parent node.
Status: Last call for comments
The DOMTokenList interface represents an interface
to an underlying string that consists of a set of
space-separated tokens.
DOMTokenList objects are always
case-sensitive, even when the underlying string might
ordinarily be treated in a case-insensitive manner.
interface DOMTokenList {
readonly attribute unsigned long length;
getter DOMString item(in unsigned long index);
boolean contains(in DOMString token);
void add(in DOMString token);
void remove(in DOMString token);
boolean toggle(in DOMString token);
stringifier DOMString ();
};lengthReturns the number of tokens in the string.
item(index)Returns the token with index index. The tokens are returned in the order they are found in the underlying string.
Returns null if index is out of range.
contains(token)Returns true if the token is present; false otherwise.
Throws a SYNTAX_ERR exception if token is empty.
Throws an INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception if token contains any spaces.
add(token)Adds token, unless it is already present.
Throws a SYNTAX_ERR exception if token is empty.
Throws an INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception if token contains any spaces.
remove(token)Removes token if it is present.
Throws a SYNTAX_ERR exception if token is empty.
Throws an INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception if token contains any spaces.
toggle(token)Adds token if it is not present, or removes it if it is. Returns true if token is now present (it was added); returns false if it is not (it was removed).
Throws a SYNTAX_ERR exception if token is empty.
Throws an INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception if token contains any spaces.
The length
attribute must return the number of tokens that result from splitting the underlying string on
spaces. This is the length.
The object's indices of the supported indexed properties are the numbers in the range zero to length-1, unless the length is zero, in which case there are no supported indexed properties.
The item(index) method must split the underlying string on spaces,
preserving the order of the tokens as found in the underlying
string, and then return the indexth item in this
list. If index is equal to or greater than the
number of tokens, then the method must return null.
For example, if the string is "a b
a c" then there are four tokens: the token with index 0 is
"a", the token with index 1 is "b", the token with index 2 is "a", and the token with index 3 is "c".
The contains(token) method must run the following
algorithm:
SYNTAX_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.The add(token) method must run the following
algorithm:
SYNTAX_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.DOMTokenList object's underlying string then stop the
algorithm.DOMTokenList object's underlying
string is not the empty string and the last character of that
string is not a space character, then append a U+0020
SPACE character to the end of that string.DOMTokenList object's underlying string.The remove(token) method must run the following
algorithm:
SYNTAX_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.The toggle(token) method must run the following
algorithm:
SYNTAX_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.INVALID_CHARACTER_ERR exception and stop the
algorithm.DOMTokenList object's underlying string then remove the given token from the underlying string and stop the
algorithm, returning false.DOMTokenList object's underlying
string is not the empty string and the last character of that
string is not a space character, then append a U+0020
SPACE character to the end of that string.DOMTokenList object's underlying string.Objects implementing the DOMTokenList interface must
stringify to the object's
underlying string representation.
Status: Last call for comments
The DOMSettableTokenList interface is the same as the
DOMTokenList interface, except that it allows the
underlying string to be directly changed.
interface DOMSettableTokenList : DOMTokenList {
attribute DOMString value;
};valueReturns the underlying string.
Can be set, to change the underlying string.
An object implementing the DOMSettableTokenList
interface must act as defined for the DOMTokenList
interface, except for the value attribute defined
here.
The value
attribute must return the underlying string on getting, and must
replace the underlying string with the new value on setting.
Status: Last call for comments
When a user agent is required to obtain a structured clone of an object, it must run the following algorithm, which either returns a separate object, or throws an exception.
Let input be the object being cloned.
Let memory be a list of objects, initially empty. (This is used to catch cycles.)
Let output be the object resulting from calling the internal structured cloning algorithm with input and memory.
Return output.
The internal structured cloning algorithm is always called with two arguments, input and memory, and its behavior depends on the type of input, as follows:
Return the undefined value.
Return the null value.
Return the false value.
Return the true value.
Return a newly constructed Number object with the same value as input.
Return a newly constructed String object with the same value as input.
Date objectReturn a newly constructed Date object with the same value as input.
RegExp objectReturn a newly constructed RegExp object with the same pattern and flags as input.
The value of the lastIndex property is not copied.
ImageData objectReturn a newly constructed ImageData object
with the same width and
height as input, and with a newly constructed
CanvasPixelArray for its data attribute, with the same
length and pixel
values as the input's.
File objectReturn a newly constructed File object corresponding to the same underlying data.
Blob objectReturn a newly constructed Blob object corresponding to the same underlying data.
FileList objectReturn a newly constructed FileList object containing a list of newly constructed File objects corresponding to the same underlying data as those in input, maintaining their relative order.
If input is in memory, then throw a DATA_CLONE_ERR
exception and abort the overall structured clone
algorithm.
Otherwise, let new memory be a list consisting of the items in memory with the addition of input.
Create a new object, output, of the same type as input: either an Array or an Object.
For each enumerable property in input, add a corresponding property to output having the same name, and having a value created from invoking the internal structured cloning algorithm recursively with the value of the property as the "input" argument and new memory as the "memory" argument. The order of the properties in the input and output objects must be the same.
This does not walk the prototype chain.
Return output.
Error)Throw a DATA_CLONE_ERR exception and abort the
overall structured clone algorithm.
Status: Last call for comments
The DOMStringMap interface represents a set of
name-value pairs. It exposes these using the scripting language's
native mechanisms for property access.
When a DOMStringMap object is instantiated, it is
associated with three algorithms, one for getting the list of
name-value pairs, one for setting names to certain values, and one
for deleting names.
interface DOMStringMap {
getter DOMString (in DOMString name);
setter void (in DOMString name, in DOMString value);
creator void (in DOMString name, in DOMString value);
deleter void (in DOMString name);
};
The names of the supported named properties on a
DOMStringMap object at any instant are the names of
each pair returned from the algorithm for getting the list of
name-value pairs at that instant.
When a DOMStringMap object is indexed to retrieve a
named property name, the value returned must be
the value component of the name-value pair whose name component is
name in the list returned by the algorithm for
getting the list of name-value pairs.
When a DOMStringMap object is indexed to create or
modify a named property name with value value, the algorithm for setting names to certain
values must be run, passing name as the name and
the result of converting value to a
DOMString as the value.
When a DOMStringMap object is indexed to delete a
named property named name, the algorithm for
deleting names must be run, passing name as the
name.
The DOMStringMap interface definition
here is only intended for JavaScript environments. Other language
bindings will need to define how DOMStringMap is to be
implemented for those languages.
The dataset attribute on
elements exposes the data-*
attributes on the element.
Given the following fragment and elements with similar constructions:
<img class="tower" id="tower5" data-x="12" data-y="5"
data-ai="robotarget" data-hp="46" data-ability="flames"
src="towers/rocket.png alt="Rocket Tower">
...one could imagine a function splashDamage() that takes some arguments, the first
of which is the element to process:
function splashDamage(node, x, y, damage) {
if (node.classList.contains('tower') && // checking the 'class' attribute
node.dataset.x == x && // reading the 'data-x' attribute
node.dataset.y == y) { // reading the 'data-y' attribute
var hp = parseInt(node.dataset.hp); // reading the 'data-hp' attribute
hp = hp - damage;
if (hp < 0) {
hp = 0;
node.dataset.ai = 'dead'; // setting the 'data-ai' attribute
delete node.dataset.ability; // removing the 'data-ability' attribute
}
node.dataset.hp = hp; // setting the 'data-hp' attribute
}
}
Status: Last call for comments
DOM3 Core defines mechanisms for checking for interface support, and for obtaining implementations of interfaces, using feature strings. [DOMCORE]
Authors are strongly discouraged from using these, as they are notoriously unreliable and imprecise. Authors are encouraged to rely on explicit feature testing or the graceful degradation behavior intrinsic to some of the features in this specification.
For historical reasons, user agents should return the true value
when the hasFeature(feature, version)
method of the DOMImplementation interface is invoked
with feature set to either "HTML" or "XHTML" and version set to either "1.0" or
"2.0".
Status: Last call for comments
The following are DOMException codes. [DOMCORE]
INDEX_SIZE_ERRDOMSTRING_SIZE_ERRHIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERRWRONG_DOCUMENT_ERRINVALID_CHARACTER_ERRNO_DATA_ALLOWED_ERRNO_MODIFICATION_ALLOWED_ERRNOT_FOUND_ERRNOT_SUPPORTED_ERRINUSE_ATTRIBUTE_ERRINVALID_STATE_ERRSYNTAX_ERRINVALID_MODIFICATION_ERRNAMESPACE_ERRINVALID_ACCESS_ERRVALIDATION_ERRTYPE_MISMATCH_ERRSECURITY_ERRNETWORK_ERRABORT_ERRURL_MISMATCH_ERRQUOTA_EXCEEDED_ERRTIMEOUT_ERRDATA_CLONE_ERRPARSE_ERRSERIALIZE_ERR[Supplemental] exception DOMException {
const unsigned short URL_MISMATCH_ERR = 21;
const unsigned short QUOTA_EXCEEDED_ERR = 22;
const unsigned short DATA_CLONE_ERR = 24;
};Status: Last call for comments
There is an implied strong reference from any IDL attribute that returns a pre-existing object to that object.
Status: Last call for comments
The HTML namespace is: http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml
The MathML namespace is: http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML
The SVG namespace is: http://www.w3.org/2000/svg
The XLink namespace is: http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink
The XML namespace is: http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace
The XMLNS namespace is: http://www.w3.org/2000/xmlns/
Data mining tools and other user agents that perform operations on content without running scripts, evaluating CSS or XPath expressions, or otherwise exposing the resulting DOM to arbitrary content, may "support namespaces" by just asserting that their DOM node analogues are in certain namespaces, without actually exposing the above strings.
Status: Last call for comments
Status: Last call for comments
Every XML and HTML document in an HTML UA is represented by a
Document object. [DOMCORE]
The document's address is an absolute URL
that is set when the Document is created. The
document's current address is an absolute URL
that can change during the lifetime of the Document,
for example when the user navigates to
a fragment identifier on the
page or when the pushState() method is called
with a new URL. The document's
current address must be set to the document's
address when the Document is created.
Interactive user agents typically expose the document's current address in their user interface.
When a Document is created by a script using the createDocument()
or createHTMLDocument()
APIs, the document's address is the same as the
document's address of the script's document.
Document objects are assumed to be XML
documents unless they are flagged as being HTML
documents when they are created. Whether a document is an
HTML document or an XML document affects the behavior of
certain APIs and the case-sensitivity of some selectors.
Status: Last call for comments
All Document objects (in user agents implementing
this specification) must also implement
the HTMLDocument interface, available using
binding-specific methods. (This is the case whether or not the
document in question is an HTML
document or indeed whether it contains any HTML
elements at all.) Document objects must also implement the document-level interface
of any other namespaces that the UA supports.
For example, if an HTML implementation also
supports SVG, then the Document object implements both
HTMLDocument and SVGDocument.
Because the HTMLDocument interface is
now obtained using binding-specific casting methods instead of
simply being the primary interface of the document object, it is no
longer defined as inheriting from Document.
[OverrideBuiltins]
interface HTMLDocument {
// resource metadata management
[PutForwards=href] readonly attribute Location location;
readonly attribute DOMString URL;
attribute DOMString domain;
readonly attribute DOMString referrer;
attribute DOMString cookie;
readonly attribute DOMString lastModified;
readonly attribute DOMString compatMode;
attribute DOMString charset;
readonly attribute DOMString characterSet;
readonly attribute DOMString defaultCharset;
readonly attribute DOMString readyState;
// DOM tree accessors
getter any (in DOMString name);
attribute DOMString title;
attribute DOMString dir;
attribute HTMLElement body;
readonly attribute HTMLHeadElement head;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection images;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection embeds;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection plugins;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection links;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection forms;
readonly attribute HTMLCollection scripts;
NodeList getElementsByName(in DOMString elementName);
NodeList getElementsByClassName(in DOMString classNames);
// dynamic markup insertion
attribute DOMString innerHTML;
HTMLDocument open(in optional DOMString type, in optional DOMString replace);
WindowProxy open(in DOMString url, in DOMString name, in DOMString features, in optional boolean replace);
void close();
void write(in DOMString... text);
void writeln(in DOMString... text);
// user interaction
readonly attribute WindowProxy defaultView;
Selection getSelection();
readonly attribute Element activeElement;
boolean hasFocus();
attribute DOMString designMode;
boolean execCommand(in DOMString commandId);
boolean execCommand(in DOMString commandId, in boolean showUI);
boolean execCommand(in DOMString commandId, in boolean showUI, in DOMString value);
boolean queryCommandEnabled(in DOMString commandId);
boolean queryCommandIndeterm(in DOMString commandId);
boolean queryCommandState(in DOMString commandId);
boolean queryCommandSupported(in DOMString commandId);
DOMString queryCommandValue(in DOMString commandId);
readonly attribute HTMLCollection commands;
// event handler IDL attributes
attribute Function onabort;
attribute Function onblur;
attribute Function oncanplay;
attribute Function oncanplaythrough;
attribute Function onchange;
attribute Function onclick;
attribute Function oncontextmenu;
attribute Function ondblclick;
attribute Function ondrag;
attribute Function ondragend;
attribute Function ondragenter;
attribute Function ondragleave;
attribute Function ondragover;
attribute Function ondragstart;
attribute Function ondrop;
attribute Function ondurationchange;
attribute Function onemptied;
attribute Function onended;
attribute Function onerror;
attribute Function onfocus;
attribute Function onformchange;
attribute Function onforminput;
attribute Function oninput;
attribute Function oninvalid;
attribute Function onkeydown;
attribute Function onkeypress;
attribute Function onkeyup;
attribute Function onload;
attribute Function onloadeddata;
attribute Function onloadedmetadata;
attribute Function onloadstart;
attribute Function onmousedown;
attribute Function onmousemove;
attribute Function onmouseout;
attribute Function onmouseover;
attribute Function onmouseup;
attribute Function onmousewheel;
attribute Function onpause;
attribute Function onplay;
attribute Function onplaying;
attribute Function onprogress;
attribute Function onratechange;
attribute Function onreadystatechange;
attribute Function onscroll;
attribute Function onseeked;
attribute Function onseeking;
attribute Function onselect;
attribute Function onshow;
attribute Function onstalled;
attribute Function onsubmit;
attribute Function onsuspend;
attribute Function ontimeupdate;
attribute Function onvolumechange;
attribute Function onwaiting;
};
Document implements HTMLDocument;Since the HTMLDocument interface holds methods and
attributes related to a number of disparate features, the members of
this interface are described in various different sections.
User agents must raise a
SECURITY_ERR exception whenever any of the members of
an HTMLDocument object are accessed by scripts whose
effective script origin is not the same as the Document's effective
script origin.
Status: Last call for comments
URLReturns the document's address.
referrerReturns the
address of the Document from which the user
navigated to this one, unless it was blocked or there was no such
document, in which case it returns the empty string.
The noreferrer link
type can be used to block the referrer.
The URL
attribute must return the document's address.
The referrer attribute
must return either the current address of the active document
of the source browsing context at the time the
navigation was started (that is, the page which navigated the browsing context
to the current document), with any <fragment> component removed; or
the empty string if there is no such originating page, or if the UA
has been configured not to report referrers in this case, or if the
navigation was initiated for a hyperlink with a noreferrer keyword.
In the case of HTTP, the referrer IDL attribute will
match the Referer (sic) header
that was sent when fetching the current
page.
Typically user agents are configured to not report
referrers in the case where the referrer uses an encrypted protocol
and the current page does not (e.g. when navigating from an https: page to an http:
page).
cookie [ = value ]Returns the HTTP cookies that apply to the
Document. If there are no cookies or cookies can't be
applied to this resource, the empty string will be returned.
Can be set, to add a new cookie to the element's set of HTTP cookies.
If the contents are sandboxed into a unique origin (in an
iframe with the sandbox attribute) or the
resource was labeled as text/html-sandboxed, a
SECURITY_ERR exception will be thrown on getting and
setting.
The cookie
attribute represents the cookies of the resource from which the
Document was created.
Some Document objects are cookie-free Document
objects. Any Document object created by the createDocument() or createHTMLDocument()
factory methods is a cookie-free Document
object. Any Document whose address does not use a server-based
naming authority is a cookie-free Document
object. Other specifications can also define
Document objects as being cookie-free Document
objects.
On getting, if the document is a
cookie-free Document object, then the user
agent must return the empty string. Otherwise, if the
Document's origin is not a
scheme/host/port tuple, the user agent must raise a
SECURITY_ERR exception. Otherwise, the user agent must
first obtain the storage mutex and then return the
cookie-string for the document's address for a
"non-HTTP" API, decoded as UTF-8, with bytes or sequences of bytes
that are not valid UTF-8 sequences interpreted as U+FFFD REPLACEMENT
CHARACTERs. [COOKIES] [RFC3629]
On setting, if the document is a cookie-free
Document object, then the user agent must do
nothing. Otherwise, if the Document's
origin is not a scheme/host/port tuple, the user agent
must raise a SECURITY_ERR exception. Otherwise, the
user agent must obtain the storage mutex and then act
as it would when receiving a set-cookie-string for
the document's address via a "non-HTTP" API, consisting
of the new value encoded as UTF-8. [COOKIES] [RFC3629]
Since the cookie attribute is accessible
across frames, the path restrictions on cookies are only a tool to
help manage which cookies are sent to which parts of the site, and
are not in any way a security feature.
lastModifiedReturns the date of the last modification to the document, as
reported by the server, in the form "MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss", in the user's local
time zone.
If the last modification date is not known, the current time is returned instead.
The lastModified
attribute, on getting, must return the date and time of the
Document's source file's last modification, in the
user's local time zone, in the following format:
All the numeric components above, other than the year, must be given as two digits in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9) representing the number in base ten, zero-padded if necessary. The year must be given as the shortest possible string of four or more digits in the range U+0030 DIGIT ZERO (0) to U+0039 DIGIT NINE (9) representing the number in base ten, zero-padded if necessary.
The Document's source file's last modification date
and time must be derived from relevant features of the networking
protocols used, e.g. from the value of the HTTP Last-Modified header of the
document, or from metadata in the file system for local files. If
the last modification date and time are not known, the attribute
must return the current date and time in the above format.
compatModeIn a conforming document, returns the string "CSS1Compat". (In quirks mode
documents, returns the string "BackCompat",
but a conforming document can never trigger quirks
mode.)
A Document is always set to one of three modes:
no-quirks mode, the default; quirks mode, used
typically for legacy documents; and limited-quirks mode,
also known as "almost standards" mode. The mode is only ever changed
from the default by the HTML parser, based on the
presence, absence, or value of the DOCTYPE string.
The compatMode IDL
attribute must return the literal string "CSS1Compat" unless the document has been set to
quirks mode by the HTML parser, in which
case it must instead return the literal string "BackCompat".
charset [ = value ]Returns the document's character encoding.
Can be set, to dynamically change the document's character encoding.
New values that are not IANA-registered aliases supported by the user agent are ignored.
characterSetReturns the document's character encoding.
defaultCharsetReturns what might be the user agent's default character encoding. (The user agent might return another character encoding altogether, e.g. to protect the user's privacy, or if the user agent doesn't use a single default encoding.)
Documents have an associated character encoding. When a Document
object is created, the document's character encoding
must be initialized to UTF-16. Various algorithms during page
loading affect this value, as does the charset setter. [IANACHARSET]
The charset
IDL attribute must, on getting, return the preferred MIME
name of the document's character encoding. On
setting, if the new value is an IANA-registered alias for a
character encoding supported by the user agent, the document's
character encoding must be set to that character
encoding. (Otherwise, nothing happens.)
The characterSet
IDL attribute must, on getting, return the preferred MIME
name of the document's character encoding.
The defaultCharset
IDL attribute must, on getting, return the preferred MIME
name of a character encoding, possibly the user's default
encoding, or an encoding associated with the user's current
geographical location, or any arbitrary encoding name.
readyStateReturns "loading" while the Document is loading, and "complete" once it has loaded.
The readystatechange event fires on the Document object when this value changes.
Each document has a current document readiness. When a
Document object is created, it must have its
current document readiness set to the string "loading"
if the document is associated with an HTML parser or an
XML parser, or to the string "complete"
otherwise. Various algorithms during page loading affect this
value. When the value is set, the user agent must fire a
simple event named readystatechange at the
Document object.
A Document is said to have an active
parser if it is associated with an HTML parser or
an XML parser that has not yet been stopped or aborted.
The readyState IDL
attribute must, on getting, return the current document
readiness.
Status: Last call for comments
The html element of a document is the
document's root element, if there is one and it's an
html element, or null otherwise.
headReturns the head element.
The head element of a document is the
first head element that is a child of the
html element, if there is one, or null
otherwise.
The head
attribute, on getting, must return the head
element of the document (a head element or
null).
title [ = value ]Returns the document's title, as given by the
title element.
Can be set, to update the document's title. If there is no
head element,
the new value is ignored.
In SVG documents, the SVGDocument interface's
title attribute takes
precedence.
The title element of a document is the
first title element in the document (in tree order), if
there is one, or null otherwise.
The title attribute must,
on getting, run the following algorithm:
If the root element is an svg
element in the "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
namespace, and the user agent supports SVG, then return the value
that would have been returned by the IDL attribute of the same name
on the SVGDocument interface. [SVG]
Otherwise, let value be a concatenation
of the data of all the child text
nodes of the title element, in
tree order, or the empty string if the
title element is null.
Replace any sequence of one or more consecutive space characters in value with a single U+0020 SPACE character.
Remove any leading or trailing space characters in value.
Return value.
On setting, the following algorithm must be run. Mutation events must be fired as appropriate.
If the root element is an svg
element in the "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
namespace, and the user agent supports SVG, then the setter must
defer to the setter for the IDL attribute of the same name on the
SVGDocument interface (if it is readonly, then this
will raise an exception). Stop the algorithm here. [SVG]
title element is null and
the head element is null, then the
attribute must do nothing. Stop the algorithm here.title element is null, then a
new title element must be created and appended to
the head element. Let element be that element. Otherwise, let element be the title
element.Text node whose data is the new value
being assigned must be appended to element.The title attribute on
the HTMLDocument interface should shadow the attribute
of the same name on the SVGDocument interface when the
user agent supports both HTML and SVG. [SVG]
body [ = value ]Returns the body element.
Can be set, to replace the body element.
If the new value is not a body or frameset element, this will throw a HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR exception.
The body element of a document is the first child of
the html element that is either a
body element or a frameset element. If
there is no such element, it is null. If the body
element is null, then when the specification requires that events be
fired at "the body element", they must instead be fired at the
Document object.
The body
attribute, on getting, must return the body element of
the document (either a body element, a
frameset element, or null). On setting, the following
algorithm must be run:
body or
frameset element, then raise a
HIERARCHY_REQUEST_ERR exception and abort these
steps.replaceChild() method had been
called with the new value and the
incumbent body element as its two arguments respectively,
then abort these steps.imagesReturns an HTMLCollection of the img elements in the Document.
embedspluginsReturn an HTMLCollection of the embed elements in the Document.
linksReturns an HTMLCollection of the a and area elements in the Document that have href attributes.
formsReturn an HTMLCollection of the form elements in the Document.
scriptsReturn an HTMLCollection of the script elements in the Document.
The images
attribute must return an HTMLCollection rooted at the
Document node, whose filter matches only
img elements.
The embeds
attribute must return an HTMLCollection rooted at the
Document node, whose filter matches only
embed elements.
The plugins
attribute must return the same object as that returned by the embeds attribute.
The links
attribute must return an HTMLCollection rooted at the
Document node, whose filter matches only a
elements with href
attributes and area elements with href attributes.
The forms
attribute must return an HTMLCollection rooted at the
Document node, whose filter matches only
form elements.
The scripts
attribute must return an HTMLCollection rooted at the
Document node, whose filter matches only
script elements.
getElementsByName(name)Returns a NodeList of elements in the
Document that have a name
attribute with the value name.
getElementsByClassName(classes)getElementsByClassName(classes)Returns a NodeList of the elements in the object
on which the method was invoked (a Document or an
Element) that have all the classes given by classes.
The classes argument is interpreted as a space-separated list of classes.
The getElementsByName(name) method takes a string name, and must return a live
NodeList containing all the HTML elements
in that document that have a name attribute
whose value is equal to the name argument (in a
case-sensitive manner), in tree order.
When the method is invoked on a Document object again
with the same argument, the user agent may return the same as the
object returned by the earlier call. In other cases, a new
NodeList object must be returned.
The getElementsByClassName(classNames) method takes a string that
contains a set of space-separated tokens representing
classes. When called, the method must return a live
NodeList object containing all the elements in the
document, in tree order, that have all the classes
specified in that argument, having obtained the classes by splitting a string on
spaces. (Duplicates are ignored.) If there are no tokens
specified in the argument, then the method must return an empty
NodeList. If the document is in quirks
mode, then the comparisons for the classes must be done in an
ASCII case-insensitive manner, otherwise, the
comparisons must be done in a case-sensitive manner.
When the method is invoked on a Document object again
with the same argument, the user agent may return the same object as
the object returned by the earlier call. In other cases, a new
NodeList object must be returned.
The getElementsByClassName(classNames) method on the
HTMLElement interface must return a live
NodeList with the nodes that the
HTMLDocument getElementsByClassName()
method would return when passed the same argument(s), excluding any
elements that are not descendants of the HTMLElement
object on which the method was invoked.
When the method is invoked on an HTMLElement object
again with the same argument, the user agent may return the same
object as the object returned by the earlier call. In other cases, a
new NodeList object must be returned.
HTML, SVG, and MathML elements define which classes they are in
by having an attribute with no namespace with the name class containing a space-separated list of classes
to which the element belongs. Other specifications may also allow
elements in their namespaces to be labeled as being in specific
classes.
Given the following XHTML fragment:
<div id="example"> <p id="p1" class="aaa bbb"/> <p id="p2" class="aaa ccc"/> <p id="p3" class="bbb ccc"/> </div>
A call to document.getElementById('example').getElementsByClassName('aaa')
would return a NodeList with the two paragraphs p1 and p2 in it.
A call to getElementsByClassName('ccc bbb') would only
return one node, however, namely p3. A call
to document.getElementById('example').getElementsByClassName('bbb ccc ')
would return the same thing.
A call to getElementsByClassName('aaa,bbb') would return no
nodes; none of the elements above are in the "aaa,bbb" class.
The HTMLDocument interface supports named properties. The names
of the supported named properties at any moment consist of
the values of the name content
attributes of all the applet, embed,
form, iframe, img, and
fallback-free object elements in the
Document that have name
content attributes, and the values of the id content attributes of all the
applet and fallback-free
object elements in the Document that have
id content attributes, and the values
of the id content attributes of all the
img elements in the Document that have
both name content attributes and
id content attributes.
When the
HTMLDocument object is indexed for property
retrieval using a name name, then the user
agent must return the value obtained using the following steps:
Let elements be the list of named elements with
the name name in the Document.
There will be at least one such element, by definition.
If elements has only one element, and that
element is an iframe element, then return the
WindowProxy object of the nested browsing
context represented by that iframe element,
and abort these steps.
Otherwise, if elements has only one element, return that element and abort these steps.
Otherwise return an HTMLCollection rooted at the
Document node, whose filter matches only named elements with
the name name.
Named elements with the name name, for the purposes of the above algorithm, are those that are either:
applet, embed, form,
iframe, img, or
fallback-free object elements that have a
name content attribute whose value
is name, orapplet or fallback-free
object elements that have an id content attribute whose value is name, orimg elements that have an id content attribute whose value is name, and that have a name content attribute present also.An object element is said to be
fallback-free if it has no object or
embed descendants.
The dir
attribute on the HTMLDocument interface is defined
along with the dir content
attribute.
Status: Implemented and widely deployed
XML documents can be created from script using the
createDocument()
method on the DOMImplementation interface.
HTML documents can be created using the createHTMLDocument()
method:
[Supplemental, NoInterfaceObject]
interface DOMHTMLImplementation {
Document createHTMLDocument(in DOMString title);
};
DOMImplementation implements DOMHTMLImplementation;implementation . createHTMLDocument( title )Returns a new Document, with a basic DOM already
constructed with an appropriate title element.
The createHTMLDocument(title) method, when invoked, must run the
following steps:
Let doc be a newly created
Document object.
Mark doc as being an HTML document.
Create a DocumentType node with the name attribute set to the string "html", and the other attributes specific to
DocumentType objects set to the empty string, null,
and empty lists, as appropriate. Append the newly created node to
doc.
Create an html element, and append it to doc.
Create a head element, and append it to the
html element created in the previous step.
Create a title element, and append it to the
head element created in the previous step.
Create a Text node, and set its data attribute to the string given by the method's
argument (which could be the empty string). Append it to the
title element created in the previous step.
Create a body element, and append it to the
html element created in the earlier step.
Return doc.
A Document object that is an XML document that was created by the DOMImplementation.createDocument()
factory method must also implement the
XMLDocumentLoader interface:
[Supplemental, NoInterfaceObject]
interface XMLDocumentLoader {
boolean load(in DOMString url);
};
The load(url) method must run the following
steps:
Let document be the Document
object on which the method was invoked.
If the origin of url is not
the same as the origin of document, throw a SECURITY_ERR
exception.
Remove all child nodes of document, without firing any mutation events.
Set the current document readiness of document to "loading".
Run the remainder of these steps asynchronously, and return true from the method.
Let result be an Document
object.
Let success be false.
Fetch url from the origin of document, with the synchronous flag set and the force same-origin flag set.
If the fetch attempt was successful, and the resource's Content-Type metadata is an XML MIME type, then run these substeps:
Create a new XML parser associated with the result document.
Pass this parser the fetched document.
If there is an XML well-formedness or XML namespace well-formedness error, then remove all child nodes from result. Otherwise let success be true.
Queue a task to run the following steps.
Set the current document readiness of document to "complete".
Replace all the children of document
by the children of result (even if it has no
children), firing mutation events as if a
DocumentFragment containing the new children had
been inserted.
Fire a simple event named load at document.
Status: Last call for comments
Status: Last call for comments. ISSUE-41 (Decentralized-extensibility) blocks progress to Last Call
Elements, attributes, and attribute values in HTML are defined
(by this specification) to have certain meanings (semantics). For
example, the ol element represents an ordered list, and
the lang attribute represents the
language of the content.
Authors must not use elements, attributes, or attribute values for purposes other than their appropriate intended semantic purpose. Authors must not use elements, attributes, or attribute values that are not permitted by this specification or other applicable specifications.
For example, the following document is non-conforming, despite being syntactically correct:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en-GB">
<head> <title> Demonstration </title> </head>
<body>
<table>
<tr> <td> My favourite animal is the cat. </td> </tr>
<tr>
<td>
—<a href="http://example.org/~ernest/"><cite>Ernest</cite></a>,
in an essay from 1992
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
...because the data placed in the cells is clearly not tabular
data (and the cite element mis-used). A corrected
version of this document might be:
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html lang="en-GB"> <head> <title> Demonstration </title> </head> <body> <blockquote> <p> My favourite animal is the cat. </p> </blockquote> <p> —<a href="http://example.org/~ernest/">Ernest</a>, in an essay from 1992 </p> </body> </html>
This next document fragment, intended to represent the heading of a corporate site, is similarly non-conforming because the second line is not intended to be a heading of a subsection, but merely a subheading or subtitle (a subordinate heading for the same section).
<body> <h1>ABC Company</h1> <h2>Leading the way in widget design since 1432</h2> ...
The hgroup element is intended for these kinds of
situations:
<body> <hgroup> <h1>ABC Company</h1> <h2>Leading the way in widget design since 1432</h2> </hgroup> ...
In the next example, there is a non-conforming attribute value ("carpet") and a non-conforming attribute ("texture"), which is not permitted by this specification:
<label>Carpet: <input type="carpet" name="c" texture="deep pile"></label>
Here would be an alternative and correct way to mark this up:
<label>Carpet: <input type="text" class="carpet" name="c" data-texture="deep pile"></label>
Through scripting and using other mechanisms, the values of attributes, text, and indeed the entire structure of the document may change dynamically while a user agent is processing it. The semantics of a document at an instant in time are those represented by the state of the document at that instant in time, and the semantics of a document can therefore change over time. User agents must update their presentation of the document as this occurs.
HTML has a progress element that
describes a progress bar. If its "value" attribute is dynamically
updated by a script, the UA would update the rendering to show the
progress changing.
Status: Awaiting implementation feedback
The nodes representing HTML elements in the DOM must implement, and expose to scripts, the interfaces listed for them in the relevant sections of this specification. This includes HTML elements in XML documents, even when those documents are in another context (e.g. inside an XSLT transform).
Elements in the DOM represent things; that is, they have intrinsic meaning, also known as semantics.
For example, an ol element
represents an ordered list.
The basic interface, from which all the HTML
elements' interfaces inherit, and which
must be used by elements that have no additional
requirements, is the HTMLElement interface.
interface HTMLElement : Element {
// DOM tree accessors
NodeList getElementsByClassName(in DOMString classNames);
// dynamic markup insertion
attribute DOMString innerHTML;
attribute DOMString outerHTML;
void insertAdjacentHTML(in DOMString position, in DOMString text);
// metadata attributes
attribute DOMString id;
attribute DOMString title;
attribute DOMString lang;
attribute DOMString dir;
attribute DOMString className;
readonly attribute DOMTokenList classList;
readonly attribute DOMStringMap dataset;
// user interaction
attribute boolean hidden;
void click();
void scrollIntoView();
void scrollIntoView(in boolean top);
attribute long tabIndex;
void focus();
void blur();
attribute DOMString accessKey;
readonly attribute DOMString accessKeyLabel;
attribute boolean draggable;
attribute DOMString contentEditable;
readonly attribute boolean isContentEditable;
attribute HTMLMenuElement contextMenu;
attribute boolean spellcheck;
// command API
readonly attribute DOMString commandType;
readonly attribute DOMString label;
readonly attribute DOMString icon;
readonly attribute boolean disabled;
readonly attribute boolean checked;
// styling
readonly attribute CSSStyleDeclaration style;
// event handler IDL attributes
attribute Function onabort;
attribute Function onblur;
attribute Function oncanplay;
attribute Function oncanplaythrough;
attribute Function onchange;
attribute Function onclick;
attribute Function oncontextmenu;
attribute Function ondblclick;
attribute Function ondrag;
attribute Function ondragend;
attribute Function ondragenter;
attribute Function ondragleave;
attribute Function ondragover;
attribute Function ondragstart;
attribute Function ondrop;
attribute Function ondurationchange;
attribute Function onemptied;
attribute Function onended;
attribute Function onerror;
attribute Function onfocus;
attribute Function onformchange;
attribute Function onforminput;
attribute Function oninput;
attribute Function oninvalid;
attribute Function onkeydown;
attribute Function onkeypress;
attribute Function onkeyup;
attribute Function onload;
attribute Function onloadeddata;
attribute Function onloadedmetadata;
attribute Function onloadstart;
attribute Function onmousedown;
attribute Function onmousemove;
attribute Function onmouseout;
attribute Function onmouseover;
attribute Function onmouseup;
attribute Function