HTML document
This element is the top-level container in an HTML document. It is used to declare that the document is HTML and that it will contain HTML elements. It seems strange that XHTML should begin with such a declaration, yet an XHTML equivalent is not part of the specification.
<html
dir="ltr | rtl"
lang="language code"
version="url"**
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
>
</html>
Key:
‡ = Required attribute
** = Transitional only
Explanation of attributes
dir: used to set the direction of the text in combination with the language set in the lang attribute. The available values are "ltr" (left to right) and "rtl" (right to left), with the default value being "ltr".
lang: used to indicate the language being used in the text contained within the element. The value of this attribute takes on the form of the ISO standard lanuage abbreviations found in RFC 3066. A list of these codes can be found on the ISO language codes page.
version**: this attribute is used to indicate the location of the DTD for the version of HTML being used. This has been deprected as the HTML version is specified in the doctype at the start of the document. In practice, this attribute is neither used nor supported.
xmlns: this attribute is used to declare the XML namespace for the document. The standard value for this attribute is http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml, which points to the XHTML specification.
Event handlers
No event handlers are defined for this element.
Compatibility
| Test |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic element support |  |
|
|
|
|
|
| Attribute: dir | |
 |
|
|
|
? |
| Attribute: lang | ? | |
|
? | |
? |
| Attribute: version | |
|
|
|
|
|
| Attribute: xmlns | |
|
|
|
|
|
Key:
The browser icons are explained in the below list:
= Microsoft Internet Explorer 6+
= Netscape Communicator 4
= Mozilla and Netscape Navigator 6+
= Opera 7+
= MSN TV (aka. WebTV)
= Konqueror 3.0+
