I
Changes between HTML4
and HTML5
This document outlines the major element differences between HTML4 and HTML5. For a
full view of all the changes, see the W3Cs document HTML5 Differences from HTML4 at
[Link]/TR/html5-diff/.
New Elements
The following list represents all the new elements introduced in HTML5. For descriptions of
these elements, see Appendix B, HTML Element Reference:
section
article
aside
hgroup
header
footer
nav
figure
figcaption
video
audio
track
embed
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Appendix IChanges between HTML4 and HTML5
mark
progress
meter
time
ruby
rt
rp
bdi
wbr
canvas
command
cetails
catalist
keygen
output
New <input> Element Types
The input elements type attribute now has the following new values. For descriptions of these
elements, see Appendix B, HTML Element Reference:
tel
search
url
email
datetime
date
month
week
time
datetime-local
number
range
color
New Attributes
597
New Attributes
Many new attributes have been added to existing elements. These new attributes either are existing
attributes added to new elements or are completely new attributes. These are also covered in depth
alongside their elements in Appendix B, HTML Element Reference:
Element
Attributes
<a>
media
<area>
hreflang, media, rel, type
<base>
target
<button>
autofocus, form, formaction, formenctype, formmethod,
formnovalidate, formtarget
<fieldset>
disabled, form, name
<form>
novalidate
<html>
manifest
<iframe>
sandbox, seamless, srcdoc
<img>
crossorigin
<input>
autocomplete, autofocus, dirname, form, formaction,
formenctype, formmethod, formnovalidate, formtarget list,
max, min, multiple, pattern, placeholder, required, step,
height, width
<label>
form
<link>
sizes
<menu>
label, type
<meta>
charset
<object>
form, typemustmatch
<ol>
reversed
<output>
form
<script>
async
<select>
autofocus, form, required
<style>
scoped
<textarea>
autofocus, form, maxlength, placeholder, required,
wrap, dirname
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Appendix IChanges between HTML4 and HTML5
Global Attributes
HTML5 greatly expands on the number of global attributes. The following list includes all the new
global attributes and the global attributes present in previous versions of HTML:
accesskey
class
contenteditable
contextmenu
dir
draggable
dropzone
hidden
id
lang
spellcheck
style
tabindex
title
translate
Changed Attributes
Several existing attributes have had their meanings changed:
Attribute
Element
Change
accept
<input>
audio/*, video/*, and image/* are now
valid values.
accesskey
global
Now allows multiple characters to be
specified.
action
<form>
No longer allowed to have an empty URL.
colspan
<td><th>
Now has to be greater than zero.
coords
<area>
No longer allows a percentage value of
the radius when the element is a circle.
Changed Attributes
599
data
<object>
No longer relative to the codebase.
defer
<script>
Explicitly executes the script when the
page has finished parsing.
dir
global
Now allows the value auto.
enctype
<form>
Now supports the value text/plain.
width/height
<img>, <iframe>,
<object>
No longer allowed to contain percentages. No longer allowed to stretch the
image to a different aspect ratio than its
intrinsic aspect ratio.
href
<link>
No longer allowed to have an empty URL.
href
<base>
Allowed to contain a relative URL.
Attributes that accept URLs
global
Now support IRIs if the documents encoding is UTF-8 or UTF-16.
http-equiv
<meta>
No longer said to be used by HTTP servers to create HTTP headers in the HTTP
response. Instead, it is said to be a pragma
directive to be used by the user agent.
id
global
Now allowed to have any unique value, as
long as it is not an empty string and does
not contain spaces.
lang
global
Takes the empty string in addition to a
valid language identifier.
media
<link>
Now accepts a media query. Defaults
to all.
Event handlers
global
Defaults to JavaScript as the scripting
language.
value
<li>
No longer deprecated.
start/type
<ol>
No longer deprecated.
style
global
Always uses CSS as the style language.
tabindex
global
Allows negative values, which indicates
that the element can receive focus but
cannot be tabbed to.
target
<a><area>
No longer deprecated.
continues
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Appendix IChanges between HTML4 and HTML5
(continued)
Attribute
Element
Change
type
<script> <style>
No longer required if the scripting language is JavaScript and the styling
language is CSS, respectively.
usemap
img
No longer takes a URL, but instead
takes a valid hash-name reference to
a map element.
Obsolete Elements
The elements in this section are no longer part of the HTML specification:
basefont
big
center
font
strike
tt
frame
frameset
noframes
acronym
applet
isindex
dir
Obsolete Attributes
Some attributes from HTML4 are no longer allowed in HTML5:
Element
Attributes
<a>
charset, coords, rev, shape
<area>
nohref
