by Emil Stenström
HTML is a much richer language than what it’s used for. There are 77 elements and each one has a certain purpose. It is possible to find that reason by reading the specification, but who does that? I wrote this list as a way to tell you what I think each of the HTML tags should be used for, common problems you might encounter, and general advise about each one.I’ve included all the elements from HTML 4.01 Strict. It’s a long one, but I’m sure you have more “tips and tricks” to add to it. Leave a comment and I’ll add yours to the list too. Let’s start off with a list of all the elements:
A, ABBR, ACRONYM, ADDRESS, AREA, B, BASE, BDO, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BR, BUTTON, CAPTION, CITE, CODE, COL, COLGROUP, DD, DEL, DFN, DIV, DL, DT, EM, FIELDSET, FORM, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, HEAD, HR, HTML, I , IMG, INPUT, INS, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LI, LINK, MAP, META, NOSCRIPT, OBJECT, OL, OPTGROUP, OPTION, P, PARAM, PRE, Q, SAMP, SCRIPT, SELECT, SMALL, SPAN, STRONG, STYLE, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TEXTAREA, TFOOT, TH, THEAD, TITLE, TR, TT, UL, VAR
For people that view this site in a visual browser I added colored bars on all the elements. They represent if an element is recommended to use or not. Green bar means “Use this!”, Yellow means “Consider if you really need it”, and Red means “Don’t use this unless you have a really good reason”.