Help talk:HTML in wikitext

HTML 5
Is anyone doing any work in preparedness for HTML5? These articles may be of use:


 * Preparing for HTML5 with Semantic Class Names
 * HTML 5 structure—HTML 4 and XHTML 1 to HTML 5
 * HTML5 id/class name cheatsheet


 * Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Merge from WP:Span tags
Seems there was consensus at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Span tags to merge that content into here if someone wants to take up the task. -- &oelig; &trade; 12:21, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

HTML, or XHTML?
Desirably or otherwise, the Doctype declaration at the top of every en:WP page announces that the page is not in HTML but in XHTML (specifically, 1.0 Transitional). HTML and XHTML aren't the same, and pointing out the difference isn't merely pedantic. As it is, this page prescribes such code as simple "&lt;br&gt;" for a line break, and of course this is not valid XHTML. I believe that the Mediawiki software (in its current state, at least) silently corrects this to "&lt;br /&gt;" and thus that this particular difference between HTML and XHTML doesn't really matter in practice; but it hardly helps (or contributes toward the educational purpose of Wikipedia as a whole) that this page promulgates misunderstandings. Unless there's some plan that I haven't heard of to switch soon to HTML (e.g. HTML5), I suggest moving this page to "Help:XHTML in wikitext" and making changes within it toward XHTML. But perhaps I'm overlooking something. -- Hoary (talk) 00:13, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The example "&lt;br&gt;" seems to indicate that the current page title "Help:HTML in wikitext" is better, the slash is not needed in the wikitext.--Patrick (talk) 12:51, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Please see the first sentence of my comment above. -- Hoary (talk) 12:55, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * That is about the code sent to the browser, not about the wikitext.--Patrick (talk) 12:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses HTML Tidy to correct a lot of markup. Tags such as, and  get transformed to a proper .

The main issues occur when content is ported to another wiki that does not use HTML Tidy, resulting in invalid XHTML output. HTML Tidy does fix things it should not at times which results in some rather confusing output. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:07, 1 April 2011 (UTC)


 * So the result is XHTML 1.0 Transitional, or purports to be. The Doctype declaration aside, it's clearly XHTML, it doesn't use framesets, and in places it's clearly transitional rather than strict, so XHTML 1.0 Transitional it is. (I've a feeling that something happens after the HTML Tidy phase, because "un-Tidy" empty &lt;ul&gt;&lt;/ul&gt; pairs are common.) Knowing that the final product is going to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional (or thereabouts), what do you want going into Tidy: HTML elements, or XHTML elements? -- Hoary (talk) 14:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)


 * HTML Tidy is not enabled for editnotices or in the MediaWiki namespace. Using will render invalid XHTML and will break tools such as Twinkle. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 23:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Although what Tidy isn't enabled for arguably isn't "wikitext", the fact that Tidy isn't enabled there and the potential for irritation when [specifically] HTML is used in the wrong place seem to me additional reasons to emphasize that XHTML is what's used for this site. Two measures: (i) retitle the page "Help:HTML in wikitext", and (ii) edit the page accordingly. (Of course the latter sounds far more forbidding than it really is. The changes would be very few and very simple; I could effect them all in a few minutes, though as somebody who seems a lot more knowledgeable than I am, you'd be wise to give the results a quick look-over.) -- Hoary (talk) 04:34, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Multiple line breaks?
br does not accept a parameter such as 2 or 3, does it?

It seems like such a natural thing. Varlaam (talk) 17:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
 * No, the tag is not part of the wikicode but is built-in to XHTML, and the only attributes that it recognises are ,  ,  ,  , and  . See http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#edef-BR
 * There is rarely a need to use more than one line break. Some people try to use them to force text to appear below an image instead of alongside it: but the effects vary between different screen resolutions, and even between browsers. The family of templates do this in a much more predictable manner. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:37, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I certainly agree with you that legitimate situations for it are rare.
 * In the interim though I have set up a multiple break at the head of one of my pages, List of World War II short films.
 * I am not able to test across multiple browsers.
 * Could you possibly have a look at my code and see what you think?
 * (I used to have a job where I had to do a code read for every programmer in the office, other than the guru. What a nightmare.)
 * Thanks, Varlaam (talk) 17:53, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not clear to me why any are necessary there - let alone three. The,  and  also seem superfluous to me: they serve to fix the formatting because the lead sentence has been mispositioned (it comes first but should be after the first image). If the lead sentence is moved after the image, this will allow those six items to be removed, so that the article then begins:

Below is an incomplete list of short films or animated cartoons that pertain to World War II, or the years leading up to it.

Restrictions

 * This is not just shorter, but it also conforms to MOS:LEAD. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:16, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Commenting ("invisible" text)
Came here from Wiki markup page where discussion referenced, this section indicated for proposed merge into HTML (XHTML) Help. I just think it would be best to have the same info in both pages, ie at Wiki markup AND Help:HTML.  David_FLXD  (Talk) 23:37, 6 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Then why not merge both pages entirely? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:36, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Took me a while to work this out, but at the top of Help:Wiki markup there is a box. A matching  should have been placed at the top of Help:HTML in wikitext, and a discussion raised here as well. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:40, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah. I think I got interrupted. Regardless, if you have this documented in two separate places, then you get two different sets of documentation. There is discussion at Help talk:Wiki markup. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:18, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. HTML5 and Wikicode are similar, but not the same. I am removing the merge notice.Frmorrison (talk) 15:12, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * OK. Help:Wiki markup documents HTML, but it matches the mish mash of that entire page. --  Gadget850talk 16:36, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Cite id italics
This is odd, there are a few pages I am familiar with that use in the references section to enable html linking of citations to books where multiple pages are used. The tag now seems to be italicizing the citations. See International_Society_for_the_Study_of_Trauma_and_Dissociation andSatanic_ritual_abuse. The italics seem to go past the references section and cause the external links section heading and actual links to italicize as well. What's up with that? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 18:44, 18 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't see the problem, but that usage is obsolete. should contain only the title of the work. You should consider using . ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 19:00, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Aw...that's a lot of work :(
 * It's weird, I see the italics in both pages, but they flow on to subsequent sections only in SRA. I'll switch 'em to SFN instead, thanks.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 19:04, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * If you don't want to get into the technicalities of that, try which may be used as a drop-in replacement. That is to say, a ref formatted as
 * details of 2012 book by Smith
 * may be amended to
 * This technique creates exactly the same anchor (and is compatible with a greater number of browsers), but does not format the text in any way. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:07, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I converted to sfn on both pages so it's fine now. That was a tedious task.  But at least it bumped up the ol' edit count.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 20:26, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I did a few fixes: You have to use harv in the long citations; you have to use last and first, not author. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:22, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I did a few fixes: You have to use harv in the long citations; you have to use last and first, not author. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:22, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

wbr
will be allowed with MediaWiki 1.22/wmf13. --  Gadget850talk 05:47, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

is a word break opportunity; that is, it specifies where it would be OK to add a line-break where a word is too long, or it is perceived that the browser will break a line at the wrong place.

As you narrow your browser window, you will see that the second example wraps between Hyper and Text.

New markup
I just noticed that now has some additional markup whitelisted. --  Gadget850talk 21:05, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * works but is styled with curly quotes; discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css
 * seems to work OK
 * , and  are whitelisted but do not work.
 * I used  just over a week ago, don't recall where except that it was a discussion page. It definitely worked - I didn't actually realise that it wasn't supposed to. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:25, 9 July 2014 (UTC)
 * and were not supported when I made major updates to this help page in May/June 2013. Took a bit of digging, but found it was added in MediaWiki 1.22/wmf9 on July 11, 2013. I have not found the changes for the table markup yet. --   Gadget850talk 01:41, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * , and  are either not whitelisted, or seem to be caught by something not recognizing them; they are converted to  . The parser generates  for any wikitable, but that is also pretty useless. It should ideally generate  for the top header row.   10:10, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * These tags also appear to be whitelisted but don't work:
 * (what is this?)
 * --  Gadget850talk 10:22, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * seems to be a deprecated Ruby tag.  11:22, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Finally found it— it wasn't in my usual HTML references.; doesn't look deprecated.  Gadget850talk 12:16, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * HTML 5 seems to be still quite fluid (it dropped back from Candidate Recommendation to Working Draft on 17 June 2014 - less than four weeks ago). Some of the changes made at the previous revision concern the Text-level semantics subsection: the Candidate Recommendation 17 December 2012 does not have , whereas the next version, the W3C Candidate Recommendation 29 April 2014 includes it at 4.5.24 The  element. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:30, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Regardless, there appear to be several tags that are whitelisted, but don't parse. Anyone know the reason?
 * ,, , and  are not listed in the section starting with '$htmlpairsStatic'. But  is listed there.
 *  Gadget850talk 15:19, 10 July 2014 (UTC)
 * ,, , and  are not listed in the section starting with '$htmlpairsStatic'. But  is listed there.
 *  Gadget850talk 15:19, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

table border
I don't see that  on  is obsolete. But I do get warnings and errors with the W3C validator:


 * : The border attribute on the table element is presentational markup. Consider using CSS instead.
 * : The border attribute on the table element is presentational markup. Consider using CSS instead.
 * : The border attribute on the table element is obsolete. Use CSS instead.

But http://www.w3.org/TR/html-markup/table.html shows that  "Indicates that its table element is not being used for layout purposes."

--  Gadget850talk 14:23, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * See just after this entry, the paragraph beginning "The  attribute on the   element". -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Nowiki
What is the corresponding HTML tag for Wikipedia's "  " Qwertyxp2000 (talk) 05:42, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I know what you mean. What are you trying to do? -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:42, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, what I am saying is how to do Wikipedia's "nowiki" thing on an HTML document? Qwertyxp2000 (talk) 10:48, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * HTML isn't Wikitext, so the term "nowiki" is meaningless. What specifically are you trying to achieve? -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:02, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * To stop HTML tag parsing in HTML documents is a little complex, and can involve the  tag. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11673978/is-there-a-html-css-way-to-display-html-tags-without-parsing for an example. Obviously non-HTML wiki markup wouldn't be parsed in a HTML document, but might not be displayed if in the xml format (e.g.   probably wouldn't be displayed) so you'd have to use a similar technique.   --Jules  (Mrjulesd) 11:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The current HTML5 spec says
 * Use  and   instead, and escape " " and " " characters as " " and " " respectively.
 * The  element was last described in the HTML 3.2 spec, but a more complete explanation of its deprecation was given in the HTML 2.0 spec, paragraph beginning "Since CDATA declared content ...". -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:54, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

General anchors?
The section Help:HTML in wikitext clarifies that  is not supported; well and good. However, it also claims that "  is for making links", and refers only to the and [] features, and to Help:Wiki_markup for more details. That claim is not the whole truth.

In HTML, the  may be employed for creating anchors. I'd like to be able to refer and link directly to theorems in mathematical texts (e.g. in wikibooks); but I have found no way to create an anchor unrelated to a (sub)section head in the wiki markup. Is there any supported way to do this, either by wiki or HTML features? JoergenB (talk) 20:23, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Since HTML 4.0, every element that is permissible in the body of a HTML document is allowed to have an  attribute. This may be used as the anchor for a link, see HTML 4.10 section 7.5.2 and HTML 5 section 3.2.5.1. Essentially, where in HTML 3.2 (and earlier) you would write Some text, in HTML 4 (and later) the construct Some text may be used for the same purpose. See also the  template. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:33, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! JoergenB (talk) 21:19, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Extended Tags:Graph
Not sure how to fix it, but it is linked to the wrong page. It should go here https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Graph 199.34.4.20 (talk) 01:44, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It's in Template:Xtag/doc. But since Help:Graph already has a link to mw:Extension:Graph, why is it wrong? -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:13, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Cite tag does not render italics
On my browser at least, the cite tag does not behave as described in the documentation. This page says "contains the title of a work and by default is formatted in italics", but the example given just below does not render italics. Does something need to be fixed? – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:26, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No italics for me either (Chrome 54.0.2840.99 m on Windows 10 Home).  E Eng  19:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I looked at the source code using Chrome's "inspect" function, and it appears that a style rule in the vector skin applies font-style: inherit; to the  tag. I wonder why... — Eru·tuon 20:47, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The actual rule is  and it's the very first one in MediaWiki:Common.css, so it's not specific to Vector skin or to any particular browser. It's been present in that form since  by  at 09:52, 12 September 2015. The relevant discussion is MediaWiki talk:Common.css/Archive 17. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:06, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In which case, it looks as if the documentation needs fixing. --David Biddulph (talk) 22:14, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That is helpful. I have removed the bit about italics. The documentation still doesn't really explain what the cite tag is for or why one would want to use it. That would be an improvement. I read the linked discussion, which was confusing (to me). – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:31, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, why is even being documented here? Shouldn't this page be restricted to stuff there's at least some reason for editors to use?  E  Eng  23:35, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It is used at least 1,700 times in article space. I've never seen a good explanation of what it is for. It is apparently sometimes used in the same way that anchor is used; see this VPT discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:42, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's because there was a page - can't remember which - that actually recommended the use of an empty </cite> to create anchors. Whatever page that was, it was amended around 2010 (2-3 years either way) so that the recommendation isn't there any more, but there are still a lot of bad uses out there. It may have been inspired by the template, which was devised for enclosing non-templated refs and giving them anchors, but which was . -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:00, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The tag is documented here because the page is intended to describe all HTML tags which are whitelisted, whether they are useful or not. The purpose of the tag has changed with the evolution of HTML; skipping the early definitions, [//www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1 HTML 4.01 recommended] that it contain "a citation or a reference to other sources"; [//www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-cite-element HTML5 specifies] that it "represents a reference to a creative work. It must include the title of the work or the name of the author ... or an URL reference". In between those there was a draft version of HTML which permitted its use only for the title of the referenced work. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:00, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * [//www.w3.org/TR/html5/rendering.html#phrasing-content-0 HTML5 suggests] that browsers should apply the  declaration to <cite ></cite> elements, so we can assume that that is what many browsers will do to these elements where the styling is not overridden locally (as it is here). References generated by the various  and  templates nowadays enclose the whole ref (except for the COinS metadata) in a <cite ></cite> element, which is why we've overridden the italicisation by default: we don't want the whole ref to be italicised, just the title of the work or the name of the periodical. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:00, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

vs. vs. . (One concept inserted in the middle of another doesn't help.)
These sentences must confuse many readers.

" or inserts a line break. Both versions of the break are supported by HTML5.  is invalid.  Using  without the   breaks syntax highlighting, so should be avoided."

The last sentence should follow the first two. This will be more easily understood.

" or inserts a line break. Both versions of the break are supported by HTML5. Using  without the   breaks syntax highlighting, so should be avoided. Use .  is invalid. Do not use it." ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:17, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Good call. Changed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:05, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't that be "Use " and not "Use "? The second contradicts the preceding sentence. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:09, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I should have linked to a diff. I implemented the proposed change "The last sentence should follow the first two", not the proposed text, which was redundant and internally inconsistent. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:55, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Small tag
The reason not to use <small ></small> is not because it renders differently in browsers (that's true of a lot of tags) but because it has a semantic meaning. See also MOS:SMALL. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:56, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

How to stop wikitext from interfering with HTML
I'm attempting to make a live clock with HTML here, but MediaWiki's wikitext keeps messing up the code by using –  etc. How can I stop this? (tbh if someone could also help me with the clock it would be much appreciated). — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 17:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , you can't have full HTML pages in MediaWiki (both for security and WP:NOTWEBHOST reasons) - to achieve what you're trying to do, you can make a user script (where you add all the code between the tags) then on the Wiki page just set it to  <span style="font-family:'Roboto',sans-serif;font-weight:300;text-shadow: 2px 2px 10px black;color:black;">Ed 6767    talk!  23:22, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I actually do know how to make a user script with the time, but what I want to do is put a clock on my user talk so people know what time it is for me, and I'm pretty sure you can't do that without constantly purging the page, and no such thing as an automatic purger exists. 86.18.238.106 (talk) 07:46, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * , you can try some userboxes that do the same thing? <span style="font-family:'Roboto',sans-serif;font-weight:300;text-shadow: 2px 2px 10px black;color:black;">Ed 6767   talk!  13:19, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Also you can add a top right-sided clock by going to Special:Preferences and clicking on "Add a clock to the personal toolbar that displays the current time in UTC and provides a link to purge the current page (documentation)". --Jules  (Mrjulesd) 13:58, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I am aware of that, but what I want to do is put a live clock on my user page, without having to repeatedly purge it. — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 15:47, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
 * All existing methods require a purge, other than the gadget mentioned by Mrjulesd. For performance reasons, Wikipedia pages are not updated dynamically. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 08:41, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Template:Tooltip, Template:Hover_title, and Template:Abbr
Please see: Templates for discussion/Log/2020 December 3

Summary: — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:25, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * (a wrapper for <abbr ></abbr>) has long been abused for non-abbreviation markup (against the HTML specs).
 * We had a template,, with for non-abbreviation use, but it was "merged" (not really) and redirected to.
 * The redir was then deprecated (for the reason mentioned above), but the community ignored the deprecation.
 * In the interim, was created to do the same thing, but with backwards parameters (and some additional features).
 * Both the then-redirect and  template have been transcluded in tens of thousands of articles, mainly via infoboxes and other templates.
 * I created a new template, with all the features of  but preserving the  parameter order (to not break deployed translcusions).
 * The TfM linked above would merge away, but it's going to require flipping the 1 and 2 parameters of its extant instances.
 * Oh, and the documentation would need updating after merger, of course.

&#60;bdi&#62; tag
In viewing §§ bdi, it does not appear to do anything in the example given. The text describes  in that it, but there are no text-direction settings shown for the example to demonstrate. &#8212;&#160;CJDOS,&#160;Sheridan,&#160;OR&#160;(talk) 22:46, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Line breaks. br variants
Help:HTML in wikitext has a section on    and variants.

Please see Help talk:Line-break handling

It is a detailed discussion with participation from editors, developers, admins, etc.. '''Most people in that thread want  used, not . See also: KISS principle'''.

See also MOS:MARKUP: "Other things being equal, keep markup simple. This makes wikitext easier to understand and edit, and the results seen by the reader more predictable. Use HTML and CSS markup sparingly." --Timeshifter (talk) 08:49, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

HTML
Does this create a button according to HTML? Lindo Kabini (talk) 10:32, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No, because it's an end tag, and those do nothing apart from terminating an open element. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:43, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Redrose64 as for a kid who just learned a little of Python and moved to C++ to learn. All is just confusing 🤯
 * Is it like this?
 * message Lindo Kabini (talk) 07:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks correct. You can learn and test HTML and other things at w3schools, as well as other websites. Try HTML Tag. Jroberson108 (talk) 12:26, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * is w3schools here on Wikipedia? But you know what, am still learning C++ and HTML is not the ideal language for me Lindo Kabini (talk) 12:30, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Jroberson108 Lindo Kabini (talk) 12:31, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It isn't Wikipedia, just a nice site to learn HTML, if that is what you want to learn. Jroberson108 (talk) 12:39, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It covers C++ too. Like I said, "and other things". Jroberson108 (talk) 12:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I already learn it at a certain site at YouTube and also here on Wikibooks so do not stress Lindo Kabini (talk) 12:46, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Jroberson108 Lindo Kabini (talk) 12:46, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Please note that this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:HTML in wikitext, it is not a help desk for how to write HTML. In particular, [//www.w3.org/TR/2021/SPSD-html52-20210128/sec-forms.html HTML forms] (including the  element) may not be used in Wikipedia, which is why it is not mentioned at Help:HTML in wikitext. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * oh, okay no problem honestly I enjoy using this. ☺️☺️ Lindo Kabini (talk) 06:02, 9 January 2024 (UTC)