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HTML 5: Is it , , or ?

I've tried checking other answers, but I'm still confused — especially after seeing W3schools HTML 5 reference.

I thought HTML 4.01 was supposed to "allow" single-tags to just be <img> and  . Then XHTML came along with <img /> and   (where someone said that the space is there for older browsers).

Now I'm wondering how I'm supposed to format my code when practicing HTML 5.

Is it  ,   or  ?

Answer*

1. If you are outputting HTML on a regular website you can use ` ` **or** ` `, both are valid anytime you are serving HTML5 as text/html.

 2. If you are serving HTML5 as XHTML (i.e. content type application/xhtml+xml, with an XML declaration) then you must use a self closing tag like so: ` `.

 If you don't the some browsers may flat out refuse to render your page (Firefox in particular is *very* strict about rendering only valid xhtml+xml pages).

 As noted in 1. ` ` is also valid for HTML5 that happens to be generated as XML but served as a regular text/html *without* an XML declaration (such as from an XSL Transform that generates web pages, or something similar).

To clear up confusion: Putting a space before the slash isn't required in HTML5 and doesn't make any difference to how the page is rendered (if anyone can cite an example I'll retract this, but I don't believe it's true - but IE certainly does a lot of other odd things with all forms of ` ` tags).

The excellent validator at http://validator.w3.org is really helpful for checking what's valid (although I'm not sure you can rely on it to also check content-type).

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wait, text/html mimetype is strict XML?

amwinter
– amwinter

2013年03月20日 07:00:49 +00:00
Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 7:00
1

You shouldn't serve it with an XML declaration if using text/html, but the content can be otherwise valid XML (e.g. generated from something that outputs XML, like XSLT output or an object that serializes to XML).

Iain Collins
– Iain Collins

2013年03月20日 10:49:57 +00:00
Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 10:49
Still not understanding: if text/html should have a  , when should I use unclosed  ?

amwinter
– amwinter

2013年03月20日 16:10:08 +00:00
Commented Mar 20, 2013 at 16:10
3

I think it was Netscape Navigator 3 or 4 which didn't like  , certainly nothing to be worried about in this day and age.

robertc
– robertc

2014年07月04日 16:46:37 +00:00
Commented Jul 4, 2014 at 16:46

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