CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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hogni89
hogni89

Reputation: 1754

Class attribute in <HTML> tag?

Is class a legal attribute of the HTML element?

<html class="...">

My Oracle ADF application does this — why?

Upvotes: 24

Views: 17347

Answers (3)

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 943567

It is not valid in HTML 4: 

<!ENTITY % html.content "HEAD, BODY">

<!ELEMENT HTML O O (%html.content;)    -- document root element -->
<!ATTLIST HTML
  %i18n;                               -- lang, dir --
  >

It is not valid in XHTML 1.0:

<!ELEMENT html (head, body)>
<!ATTLIST html
  %i18n;
  id          ID             #IMPLIED
  xmlns       %URI;          #FIXED 'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'
  >

It is valid in HTML 5:

The following attributes are common to and may be specified on all HTML elements (even those not defined in this specification):

  • ...
  • class
  • ...

My Oracle ADF application does this - wounder why

Presumably to apply style or JS from a shared external file to specific pages.

Upvotes: 31

cssyphus
cssyphus

Reputation: 40038

There are some great reasons to use a class on the HTML tag.

You can use such css globals to style around different pages, different browsers, etc.

modernizr uses this technique

css_browser_selector.js uses this technique

Richard Pianka discusses how the technique is used in the above css_browser_selector script

Chris Coyier discusses why the technique is useful

Further Reading:

Avoid setting a global class for html

Upvotes: 8

zessx
zessx

Reputation: 68790

"The class attribute is not valid in: base, head, html, meta, param, script, style, and title". http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_standard_class.asp

You can get what you want using this pattern :

<html>
   <body class="">
   </body>
</html>

or (better, I guess)

<html>
   <body>
      <div class="">
      </div>
   </body>
</html>

Upvotes: -2

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