Elements
HTML
W3C
W3C, or World Wide Web Consortium, is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.
HTML 4.01 Specification Status
W3C Recommendation 24 December 1999
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. The latest status of this document series is maintained at the W3C.
This document specifies HTML 4.01, which is part of the HTML 4 line of specifications. The first version of HTML 4 was HTML 4.0 [HTML40], published on 18 December 1997 and revised 24 April 1998. This specification is the first HTML 4.01 Recommendation. It includes non-editorial changes since the 24 April version of HTML 4.0. There have been some changes to the DTDs, for example. This document obsoletes previous versions of HTML 4.0, although W3C will continue to make those specifications and their DTDs available at the W3C Web site.
This document has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties and has been endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation. It is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference from another document. W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionality and interoperability of the Web.
W3C recommends that user agents and authors (and in particular, authoring tools) produce HTML 4.01 documents rather than HTML 4.0 documents. W3C recommends that authors produce HTML 4 documents instead of HTML 3.2 documents. For reasons of backward compatibility, W3C also recommends that tools interpreting HTML 4 continue to support HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0 as well.
For information about the next generation of HTML, "The Extensible HyperText Markup Language" [XHTML], please refer to the W3C HTML Activity and the list of W3C Technical Reports.
This document has been produced as part of the W3C HTML Activity. The goals of the HTML Working Group (Members only) are discussed in the HTML Working Group charter (Members only).
A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
Public discussion on HTML features takes place on www-html@w3.org (archives of www-html@w3.org).
Available languages
The English version of this specification is the only normative version. However, for translations of this document, see http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html4-updates/translations.
Errata
The list of known errors in this specification is available at:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html4-updates/errata
Please report errors in this document to www-html-editor@w3.org.
HTML5 Status
W3C Working Draft 05 April 2011
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 in a manner that is tracked by the W3C, please submit them via using our public bug database. If you do not have an account then you can enter feedback using this form: form
If you cannot do this then you can also e-mail feedback to public-html-comments@w3.org (subscribe, archives), and arrangements will be made to transpose the comments to our public bug database. Alternatively, you can e-mail feedback to whatwg@whatwg.org (subscribe, archives). The editor guarantees that all substantive feedback sent to this list will receive a reply. However, such feedback is not considered formal feedback for the W3C process. 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:
E-mail notifications of changes
HTML-Diffs mailing list (diff-marked HTML versions for each change): http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-diffs/latest
Commit-Watchers mailing list (complete source diffs): http://lists.whatwg.org/listinfo.cgi/commit-watchers-whatwg.org
Browsable version-control record of all changes:
CVSWeb interface with side-by-side diffs: http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/html5/
Annotated summary with unified diffs: http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker
Raw Subversion interface: 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 05 April 2011 Working 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.
HTML: The Markup Language Reference Status
W3C Working Draft 05 April 2011
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 latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
This document is the 05 April 2011 Working Draft of HTML: The Markup Language Reference. If you'd like to comment on this document, the preferred means for commenting is to submit your comments through the HTML Working Group bugzilla database with the Component field set to HTML5: The Markup Language. Alternatively, you can send comments by e-mail to public-html-comments@w3.org (archived).
This document was published by the W3C HTML Working Group, part of the HTML Activity in the W3C Interaction Domain.
Instability and incompleteness of this document
This document is a working draft - all parts of it remain subject to significant change or removal, and some parts are currently incomplete; in particular, many elements currently lack complete documentation in the following subsections:
Examples
The documentation for each element ideally have at least one conformant example and at least one non-conformant example.
Details
The purpose of this subsection is to provide, where needed, additional details about the semantics of the element and its attributes.
Additional constraints and admonitions
This purpose of this subsection is to provide, where needed, additional document-conformance constraints and usage admonitions for the element and its attributes (in addition to those already documented in the Permitted content, Permitted attributes, Permitted parent elements, and Tag omission subsections).
Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. This document is informative only. 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.
W3C Copyright
Copyright © 2012 World Wide Web Consortium,
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics,
Keio University).
All Rights Reserved.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-documents-20021231
