ObscureTags.com bbs - a discussion of strange and rarely used HTML tags

ObscureTags.com - a discussion of strange and rarely used HTML tags Jon
2006-12-08 21:24:55

Hello and welcome to my little discussion board.

So... what did we miss in terms of obscure tags? Anyone know where I can find a list of Firefox or IE-specific tags?

TagHack
2006-12-08 21:45:15

The ruby tag is used for including phonetic markup in languages such as Japanese. The phonetics will appear over the kanji.

jon
2006-12-08 22:14:27

Interesting, TagHack. It's kind of funny to think about, but CSS is really the savior of a lot of these tags. With a bit o' stylin', all those semantic web-related tags actually become useful in terms of day-to-day work.

If you're into that sort of thing, anyway.

Along those same lines, a lot of people have pointed out that a lot of these tags are recommended by the w3c for accessibility. Fine. Cool. I'm not sure the average web developer knows about 'em, though.

Brad
2006-12-08 22:25:50

You should include a bit on my personal (and dying) favorite: nested marquees. If you use the bounce behavior and nest two marquees it will cause text to bounce around a box (at least in some browsers)

richrag
2006-12-08 22:45:54

Don't forget the <xmp> tag. Like <pre> but more useful to developers dumping stuff

Jeffery
2006-12-08 23:36:27

What about strong and em. They are much much better then b and i any day.

Chris
2006-12-09 00:06:33

Opera?

ike
2006-12-09 00:31:41

Brad, you said you could use the bounce behavior with nested marquees...how exactly do you implement said bounce behavior?

Monkeyget
2006-12-09 02:08:43

Here is how Opera renders some tags :
-it renders the mister-t image and the abbreviation aswell.
-Del and ins work but it only strike or underline the text but that's about it.
-Ruby doesn't work at all

converter
2006-12-09 02:56:24

The LABEL element works with any control, not just radio buttons. Would that more sites used labels as they make working with forms much easier...dare I say, more intuitive?

HTML-savvy
2006-12-09 03:35:15

Uhm ... You're obviously not into semantic HTML. Most of the semantic web world use a lot of the tags you call obscure.

@Jeffery: em/strong can not automatically replace i/b, only when the marked up text needs emphasis etc. Typographic rules dictate when to use italics/bold and when to use em/strong.

HTML-savvy
2006-12-09 03:39:30

Oh and you can actually use the object tag to insert images. (Not supported by all browsers, of course)

shar
2006-12-09 05:09:47

The fact that many web developers are illiterate does not make at least half of the tags that you mention any less valid or useful.

Jon
2006-12-09 05:10:43

Any chance you could include details such as which are valid HTML/XHTML and which are proprietary?

Young Pete
2006-12-09 07:14:06

You simply must look into the <isindex> tag. It is the granddaddy of all form fields. It puts a text box, a button, and a horizontal rule at the very top of your page. Any text sent has its spaces escaped with a "+" and is sent as a query string. Best of all, <isindex> goes in <head>!

Young Pete
2006-12-09 07:16:42

Young Pete
2006-12-09 07:17:35

Whoops, that happened with a page refresh. Please change the secret numbah.

Jon
2006-12-09 07:26:17

Well... sure. I haven't been too deeply into the semantic web. Perhaps it's something I should've paid closer attention to, but yeah... sorry. Busy trying to keep up with linux/php/javascript/running/the killing of videogame enemies/hangin' with the wife and/or dog.

In other words, I haven't been pouring over w3c accessibility standards.

I would imagine that I'm like a lot of developers in that we're working, we're already really busy, and the actual markup falls pretty low in the priorities in terms of getting stuff done and working and out the door. If the boss and client can see it alright, well, then, it's done, right?

(I think I just heard a few heads explode out there...)

Just because I list a tag as "obscure" doesn't mean I'm saying it is useless. It's funny how worked up people get about any given tag.

Label is a good example. I've been working with various people's code for years and haven't encountered it. Maybe I haven't looked closely enough, but calling some attention to it isn't gonna do anyone any harm.

There's a story behind every tag. They all exist for a reason. All the accessibility people have pointed out the utility of label for screen readers. Using it is a good practice. That doesn't mean most people do.

Anyway... I didn't really expect to get dugg so fast, but all the suggestions really help. We're gonna have to cover canvas and mathML at some point.

I also need to figure out the best way to update the site. I wonder how rss readers handle non-standard tags...

jon
2006-12-09 08:23:02

Whoa. Isindex is pretty special... but can its power be controlled?

Scott
2006-12-09 10:38:18

<tt> - "typewriter text" (monospace)
<kbd> / <code> / <samp> - variants of code/computer text
<basefont size="3">
<sub> / <sup> - sub/superscript
<applet> - who uses that anymore? ;)
<col> / <colgroup> - used inside tables
<center> - ah, the good old days.
<menu> - supposed to contain <li> elements. Weird.

Scott
2006-12-09 10:42:19

It's worth mentioning that you can also use javascript: URLs to provide base64-encoded data to <img src=..> as well.

http://www.elf.org/essay/inline-image.html

Also, you can do XBM-formatted images (1-bit colour, human-readable format - used to be used for file type bitmaps when listing directories on Apache, for example, back in the day.) Like data: and javascript:, it also doesn't work in IE 6 and newer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBM

Greg
2006-12-09 13:31:25

"If the boss and client can see it alright, well, then, it's done, right?"

It's always easier to be done than satisfied.

Pete Shaw
2006-12-09 13:34:47

Just like to point out that an acronym is a WORD formed by "combining initial letters or parts of a series of words" such as radar or laser. Not any old foolish jumble of letters.

C E
2006-12-09 14:03:44

the bdo element is theoretically useful to insert right to left languages into a left to right page. That is if you're writing a website explaining arabic to english speakers, rather than have to keep switching the way you read while developing you could simply enter the arabic in left to right and then use to the bdo tag to have it render correctly

Name
2006-12-09 18:32:07

Embedded images work in Opera, Konqueror, and Safari as well. In fact, IE is the only real browser I've found that doesn't support them (stuff like Lynx doesn't count).

TM
2006-12-09 19:39:19

I came across the <xmp> tag a few weeks ago for the first time in a long history with the web. I had to look it up to find out what the heck it was. My boss had used it in a page he had given me to integrate into our web site... I asked him about it... he said it was the only way he could ever discover to insert a visible HTML tag into a document. Amazing place, this HTML-wasteland...

Dan Black
2006-12-09 21:52:47

how about image maps? i always thought they were funny... but occasionally useful 9 years ago.

Andre
2006-12-09 22:00:00

Firefox FTW

Christian
2006-12-10 02:34:03

I think you (the site owner) are arrogant. "If you can see this image, you must be using Firefox" ... I'm using Opera (http://www.opera.com/) and can see it as well. Stop hyping your beloved Firefox so mad. There are other, even better ones. Probably you should try them out.

Patrick Trettenbrein
2006-12-10 03:36:04

I can also see the image, using Konqueroer. :)

Patrick Trettenbrein
2006-12-10 03:36:07

I can also see the image, using Konqueroer. :)

Joeri
2006-12-10 08:02:23

A tip for using the label tag more effectively: apply a :hover style to label tags to make them appear differently when hovered. Users intuitively understand areas that change when hovered to be clickable. There is a behavior floating around the nets to enable the :hover style on all tags (including label) in IE6. It's not just more usable, using the right style it also looks better.

Michal J. Gajda
2006-12-10 08:20:58

Most of them seem to be removed from XHTML Basic. That's good :-), another reason to do XHTML instead of HTML.

Jeffy
2006-12-10 15:01:55

I'm a highschool student currently learning about web design, and I'm surprised by how many of these obscure tags my teacher is using.

So far labels, definition lists, and optgroups have been part of the lesson plan.

Chris
2006-12-10 18:56:53

Jeffry: Labels, def lists and optgroups are not obscure at all, and should be used for sementiic properties

James
2006-12-11 05:12:56

The owner of this site is pretty ignorant, labels are everywhere these days and are VERY useful. I rarely click the radio button at all these days.
I hope the next version of Safari supports them, its strange that it doesn't

Nick
2006-12-12 04:36:33

Cool stuff. For Your Enlightenment: Ruby text in general is small annotations next to body text. Furigana is a *specific* form of ruby used in Japanese. Chinese also uses a ruby of a different name.

Also, there's an experimental extension for ruby support in Firefox:
http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_rubysupport

(Also also: isindex is fuggin' sweet!)

Dave
2006-12-13 10:00:55

There's a lot of bouncing marquis activity here. I built it with Web Page Maker and need to redo the page some day but the bounce works. It says in the Add your comments here section below: "HTML will be entitized" What's entitized mean?

Dave
2006-12-13 10:03:29

Sorry, on the above post I didn't realize the URL http://www.davesweb.us would show up as an active link under my name. Use this one instead for the bouncing marquis.

Paul
2006-12-14 15:12:52

The reason that you use a label tag, is partly for semantic niceness, but much more so for visually impaired visitors, so that as they navigate a website they understand what form input a specific label is for. <label for="firstname">Your first name</label><input type="text" name="firstname" /> lets a text reader understand that those 2 HTML elements are related and that the label describes what should go in an input field.

Alf Tunheim
2006-12-16 11:40:17

I believe Skandiabanken (web based bank) uses the keygen tag. Unfortunately it's all in Norwegian. Their site can be found at http://skandiabanken.no

2006-12-22 14:36:48

"I've been working with various people's code for years and haven't encountered it."

You need to find some more experienced people to work with.

Bergo
2006-12-26 17:34:04

Regarding the Keygen tag, I left a comment on it's page. But for non IE browsers enrolling for a digital certificate this keygen tag is still used. As an example (only one I could find on VeriSign's site).

https://digitalid.verisign.com/client/class1Netscape.htm

If you check the HTNK code on that page you will see the KEYGEN tag.

I've never had to parse the request though.

Also see http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/spkac.html

Raios
2007-01-02 09:01:49

Waiiit, what? The listed tags are obscure?
I frequently use small, big, dl, sup/sup etc... Though I stopped using isindex like half a decade ago.
But then again I at one point in time decided to memorize every single HTML tag/attribute back in 2002 or 2001.. That may explain my familiarity with such tags. Also I've been a regular (creating webpages) in the intarwebs since 1998. Soo.. How does one know if a tag is obscure or not? There are a lot of community sites that give users fake html to play with, often using such things such as [center], [sup], [br], and that then getting turned into < center > etc, if they are on the approved list.

Dan
2007-01-14 13:29:17

The keygen tag is used for asymmetric public encryption. You'd use it if you wanted to initiate that kind of encrypted connection with a server. If you're completely confused I suggest checking out public key encryption at wikipedia.

mnicky
2007-03-09 03:10:24

Do you know <banner> ? It was used for making text to be on the top of page.

Mnicky
2007-03-09 03:11:42

Or <fig> was used to insert an image wtih label.

Mnicky
2007-03-09 03:12:58

And <keygen> was probably used to generate keywords....

Mnicky
2007-03-09 03:19:27

Element <lh> was used for heading of lists <ol> or <ul>,
<listing> and <plaintext> were used in the same case like <pre> to make some text without formatting. Tag <menu> was created to make menus easily, very strange is <person> element. It is for automatic identification of person's name.

Mnicky
2007-03-09 03:21:11

And <server> was used in Netscape to define Javascript on the SERVER side!!!

Mnicky
2007-03-09 03:23:07

The tags I typed here and more can be found in PSPAD EDITOR: http://www.pspad.com

Mnicky
2007-03-09 03:24:22

I forgot to write that the tags in that program are displayed after pressing ctrl+space

j.j.
2007-04-16 17:34:04

http://elektronotdienst-nuernberg.de/bugs/dirty-ten.html
My favorite is <image>

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