HTML 4.01 Specification (original) (raw)
W3C Proposed Recommendation
This version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/PR-html40-19990824
(plain text [786Kb], gzip'ed tar archive of HTML files [367Kb], a .zip archive of HTML files [400Kb], gzip'ed Postscript file [740Kb, 387 pages], a PDF file [3Mb])
Latest version:
Previous version:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424
Editors:
Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org>
Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@w3.org>
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
Copyright © 1997-1999 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability,trademark, document use andsoftware licensing rules apply.
Abstract
This specification defines the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), version 4.0 (subversion 4.01), the publishing language of the World Wide Web. In addition to the text, multimedia, and hyperlink features of the previous versions of HTML, HTML 4.01 supports more multimedia options, scripting languages, style sheets, better printing facilities, and documents that are more accessible to users with disabilities. HTML 4.01 also takes great strides towards the internationalization of documents, with the goal of making the Web truly World Wide.
HTML 4.01 is an SGML application conforming to International Standard ISO 8879 -- Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO8879].
Status of this document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. The latest status of this document series is maintained at the W3C.
This document is a revised version of the 4.0 Recommendation first released on 18 December 1997 and then revised 24 April 1998 Changes since the 24 April version are not just editorial in nature. There have been some changes to the DTDs, for example.
On 24 August 1999, this document enters a Proposed Recommendationreview period. From that date until 22 September 1999, W3C Advisory Committee representatives are encouraged to review this specification and return comments in their completed ballots to w3c-html-review@w3.org. Please send any comments of a confidential nature in separate email to w3t-html@w3.org, which is visible to the Team only.
No sooner than 14 days after the end of the review period, the Director will announce the document's disposition: it may become a W3C Recommendation (possibly with minor changes), it may revert to Working Draft status, or it may be dropped as a W3C work item.
Publication as a Proposed Recommendation does not imply endorsement by the W3C membership. This is still a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite W3C Proposed Recommendation as other than "work in progress."
W3C recommends that user agents and authors (and in particular, authoring tools) produce HTML 4.01 documents rather than HTML 3.2 documents (see [HTML32]). For reasons of backwards compatibility, W3C also recommends that tools interpreting HTML 4.01 continue to support HTML 3.2 and HTML 2.0 as well.
This document has been produced as part of the W3C HTML Activity. The goals of the HTML Working Group (members only) are discussed in the HTML Working Group charter (members only).
A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
Public discussion on HTML features takes place on www-html@w3.org.
Please report errors in this document to www-html-editor@w3.org.
Quick Table of Contents
- About the HTML 4.01 Specification
- Introduction to HTML 4.01
- On SGML and HTML
- Conformance: requirements and recommendations
- HTML Document Representation - Character sets, character encodings, and entities
- Basic HTML data types - Character data, colors, lengths, URIs, content types, etc.
- The global structure of an HTML document - The HEAD and BODY of a document
- Language information and text direction - International considerations for text
- Text - Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases
- Lists - Unordered, Ordered, and Definition Lists
- Tables
- Links - Hypertext and Media-Independent Links
- Objects, Images, and Applets
- Style Sheets - Adding style to HTML documents
- Alignment, font styles, and horizontal rules
- Frames - Multi-view presentation of documents
- Forms - User-input Forms: Text Fields, Buttons, Menus, and more
- Scripts - Animated Documents and Smart Forms
- SGML reference information for HTML - Formal definition of HTML and validation
- SGML Declaration of HTML 4.01
- Document Type Definition
- Transitional Document Type Definition
- Frameset Document Type Definition
- Character entity references in HTML 4.01
- Changes
- Performance, Implementation, and Design Notes
Full Table of Contents
- About the HTML 4.01 Specification
- Introduction to HTML 4.01
- On SGML and HTML
- Conformance: requirements and recommendations
- HTML Document Representation - Character sets, character encodings, and entities
- Basic HTML data types - Character data, colors, lengths, URIs, content types, etc.
- The global structure of an HTML document - The HEAD and BODY of a document
- Language information and text direction - International considerations for text
- Text - Paragraphs, Lines, and Phrases
- Lists - Unordered, Ordered, and Definition Lists
- Introduction to lists
- Unordered lists (UL), ordered lists (OL), and list items (LI)
- Definition lists: the DL, DT, and DD elements
- The DIR and MENU elements
- Tables
- Introduction to tables
- Elements for constructing tables
- The TABLE element
* Table directionality - Table Captions: TheCAPTION element
- Row groups: the THEAD, TFOOT, and TBODY elements
- Column groups: theCOLGROUP and COLelements
* The COLGROUP element
* The COL element
* Calculating the number of columns in a table
* Calculating the width of columns - Table rows: The TR element
- Table cells: TheTH and TD elements
* Cells that span several rows or columns
- The TABLE element
- Table formatting by visual user agents
- Table rendering by non-visual user agents
- Sample table
- Links - Hypertext and Media-Independent Links
- Introduction to links and anchors
- The A element
- Document relationships: the LINK element
- Path information: theBASE element
- Objects, Images, and Applets
- Introduction to objects, images, and applets
- Including an image: the IMG element
- Generic inclusion: theOBJECT element
- Including an applet: the APPLET element
- Notes on embedded documents
- Image maps
- Visual presentation of images, objects, and applets
- How to specify alternate text
- Style Sheets - Adding style to HTML documents
- Introduction to style sheets
- Adding style to HTML
- External style sheets
- Cascading style sheets
- Hiding style data from user agents
- Linking to style sheets with HTTP headers
- Alignment, font styles, and horizontal rules
- Formatting
- Fonts
- Rules: the HR element
- Frames - Multi-view presentation of documents
- Introduction to frames
- Layout of frames
- Specifying target frame information
- Alternate content
- Inline frames: theIFRAME element
- Forms - User-input Forms: Text Fields, Buttons, Menus, and more
- Introduction to forms
- Controls
- The FORM element
- The INPUT element
- The BUTTON element
- The SELECT, OPTGROUP, and OPTION elements
- The TEXTAREA element
- The ISINDEX element
- Labels
- Adding structure to forms: the FIELDSET and LEGEND elements
- Giving focus to an element
- Disabled and read-only controls
- Form submission
- Form submission method
- Successful controls
- Processing form data
* Step one: Identify the successful controls
* Step two: Build a form data set
* Step three: Encode the form data set
* Step four: Submit the encoded form data set - Form content types
* application/x-www-form-urlencoded
* multipart/form-data
- Scripts - Animated Documents and Smart Forms
- Introduction to scripts
- Designing documents for user agents that support scripting
- Designing documents for user agents that don't support scripting
- SGML reference information for HTML - Formal definition of HTML and validation
- Document Validation
- Sample SGML catalog
- SGML Declaration of HTML 4.01
- SGML Declaration
- Document Type Definition
- Transitional Document Type Definition
- Frameset Document Type Definition
- Character entity references in HTML 4.01
- Introduction to character entity references
- Character entity references for ISO 8859-1 characters
- Character entity references for symbols, mathematical symbols, and Greek letters
- Character entity references for markup-significant and internationalization characters
- Changes
- Changes between 24 April 1998 HTML 4.0 and 24 August 1999 HTML 4.01 versions
- Changes to the specification
* General changes
* On SGML and HTML
* HTML Document Representation
* Basic HTML data types
* Global structure of an HTML document
* Language information and text direction
* Tables
* Links
* Objects, Images, and Applets
* Style Sheets in HTML Documents
* Frames
* Forms
* SGML Declaration
* Strict DTD
* Notes
* References - Errors that were corrected
- Minor typographical errors that were corrected
- Clarifications
- Known Browser problems
- Changes to the specification
- Changes between 18 December 1997 and 24 April 1998 versions
- Changes between HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.0 (18 December 1997)
- Changes to elements
* New elements
* Deprecated elements
* Obsolete elements - Changes to attributes
- Changes for accessibility
- Changes for meta data
- Changes for text
- Changes for links
- Changes for tables
- Changes for images, objects, and image maps
- Changes for forms
- Changes for style sheets
- Changes for frames
- Changes for scripting
- Changes for internationalization
- Changes to elements
- Changes between 24 April 1998 HTML 4.0 and 24 August 1999 HTML 4.01 versions
- Performance, Implementation, and Design Notes