Attributes are name-and-value pairs used to define the characteristics of an HTML element, and are placed inside the element’s opening tag. There are many different attributes depending on the HTML tag being used. But the main three are the id, class, and style attributes.
The name is the property you want to set, and the value is the value of the property and is always put inside quotations.
ID Attribute
The following provides an id to a paragraph of text and one to an image. An id is like a nickname – a very important nickname. We may use it to refer back to the element using CSS or JavaScript and since it’s a very important nickname it will take precedence over other minor nicknames (the class attribute).
<p id="main_paragraph">This is a paragraph.</p>
<img decoding="async" src="/images/logo.png" id="logo_image" alt="My Logo" />
img tag that are self closing and have no actual closing tag, you can place the attribute anywhere before the closing />.
Class Attribute
The following uses the class attribute to provide a minor nickname to an element. It can also be used to refer back to the element using CSS or JavaScript, but if another rule in our CSS or JavaScript conflicts and is referring to the element’s id, the class (minor nickname) will be overruled by the id.
<p class="paragraph">This is a paragraph.</p>
<img decoding="async" src="/images/logo.png" class="image" alt="My Logo" />
<p id="main_paragraph" class="paragraph">This is a paragraph.</p>
<img decoding="async" src="/images/logo.png" id="logo_image" class="logo_image image no_border" alt="My Logo" />
Style Attribute
The style attribute allows you to specify style rules within the element itself instead of placing them in a linked stylesheet. However, this should be done sparingly, as it’s not good practice. It’s better to keep all, or nearly all, of your styles in one place – the linked style sheet for your site or document.
The style attribute is followed by one or more CSS styles with the property coming first, then a colon, then the value of the property, and closed with a semi-colon (style=”color: red;”).
<p class="paragraph" style="color: red; font-size: 18px;">This is a paragraph.</p>
<img decoding="async" src="/images/logo.png" style="border-color: red;" class="image" alt="My Logo" />
We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.
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HTML NOTES:
- In our HTML section the term “tag” and “element” are often used interchangeably to refer to both the tag used to create a page element and the element created by the tag (
ptag =pelement = paragraph on the page) - HTML5 is not case sensitive; so
Pis the same asp,ÂH1is the same ash1 - Global attributes can be used with all HTML tags and are therefore not mentioned on every tag page
- To write clean, readable HTML code, it is best to use indentation whereas elements within elements are indented (tabbed or spaces) to create something that looks like a project outline
- The browser will automatically remove any extra spaces and lines in your HTML code when the page is displayed
- Double quotes or single quotes can be used around HTML attribute values, but when the attribute value itself contains one form of quote, it will be necessary to use the other around the attribute
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