

Obscure HTML tags that you should know and even use - kqr2
http://www.instantfundas.com/2009/02/5-obscure-html-tags-that-you-should.html

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yan
They need to add 'label' to that list. It's not really obscure, but not enough
people use it; not even the big sites (ahem, eBay.) It adds a good amount to
the usability to the page, in my opinion.

('label' associates another block of text/html with an input field. So if
something says: Name: |_________|, and Name is wrapped in the label tag,
clicking on Name is enough to give the textbox focus)

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Hexstream
Yeah, label is great.

You can associate a label with any element without having to nest the element
in the label too; just use label's _for_ attribute with the element's ID. It's
useful, for example, if you want the labels in one column and the form
controls in another.

Make sure to have the label take the maximum available space; if you have a
label centered in a table cell you want the label to span the whole cell so
it's easier to click on it to select the associated control.

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LogicHoleFlaw
Once I started using <label> for all my forms, I became quite keenly aware of
others' forms which don't use it. It's extremely convenient.

edit: <http://htmldog.com/> has great tutorials on modern and complete form
building. It's a fantastic resource.

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daleharvey
flagged because it opened popups, i think it tried to install some software,
froze firefox a few times, then gave me a popup asking me if I really wanted
to leave

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pierrefar
Flagged for the horrible JS that pops up when I want to close that tab and
says "Are you sure?" Yes, I'm freakin sure.

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Ardit20
I thought that was catchy somewhat, although quite weird.

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apstuff
Firefox froze when this page loaded.

Default behavior for fieldset is different under IE, FF and Opera. IE rounds
the corners where FF and OP do not. Not critical but if you're after the same
look and feel it should be tested. Didn't try CSS with it.

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sevib
Interesting, especially the fieldset tag looks very useful, I didn't know
about that one.

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Hexstream
Beware, wbr is not part of the HTML 4 standard (I'm not sure it's part of any
standard). The other tags are standard.

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jonny_noog
_The <wbr> means word break and according to Peter-Paul Koch, it tells the
browser that it may insert a line break here, if it wishes."_

If it wishes?! Because I'm always on the hunt for tags that will introduce
more ambiguity in my layouts across browsers, I don't have enough yet. o_0

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Hexstream
I think you don't understand the intent. It's to help you give hints to the
rendering engine about where you'd prefer to have line breaks if there needs
to be one nearby, so that you can tweak some of your text so it reads better.

I'd be surprised if it broke your layout on a browser (aside from the fact
it's not a standardized tag).

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jonny_noog
Ah, I see, you're right. Actually taking the time to read more of the referred
to page on quirksmode.org does make the intent of the tag clearer. The quote
taken out of context in the article does make the tag sound like rather
ridiculous though.

More from quirksmode.org:

 _I use it a lot in the great compatibility tables. These tables are very
large and very tight, and I wish to avoid horizontal scrollbars, if possible.
These scrollbars are mainly caused by the length of method or attribute names,
for instance getElementsByTagName(). Therefore I do:

<div class="name">getElements<wbr>ByTagName()</div>

I give the browser the option of adding a line break. This won't be necessary
on very large resolutions, when the table has plenty of space. On smaller
resolutions, however, such strategically placed line breaks keep the table
from growing larger than the window, and thus causing horizontal scrollbars._

I still won't be using it. :)

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aston
It's not a real tag anymore, but <xmp> was really cool. Everything between the
start and end tag was presented verbatim, with no HTML parsing. Basically a
lazy man's HTML escape in a fixed width font--good for pasting in code. We use
it every now and then for our internal tools since Firefox is down with xmp.

<http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/tagpages/x/xmp.htm>

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kd5bjo
How is this different from a <pre> tag?

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blasdel
Markup is still parsed inside a <pre> tag. <xmp> is more like CDATA.

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nreece
How about the <optgroup> tag: <http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_optgroup.asp>

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infinity
I couldn't open the page at all due to virus warnings.

