body (HTML element)
| Depr. | Empty | Version |
|---|---|---|
| No | No | HTML 2 |
| IE5.5+ | FF1+ | SA1.3+ | OP9.2+ | CH2+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full | Full | Full | Full | Full |
Syntax
Description
The body element wraps around all of the
content that will be displayed on screen (or in other media, such as
print), such as headings, paragraphs, images, tables, and so on. It has
some unique attributes, including alink, link, and vlink, all of which are now deprecated, as well as a
number of other attributes that aren’t defined in any standard but are,
regrettably, still in common use. These are:
marginheightsets the space between the top and bottom of the document content and the viewport (originally defined by Netscape 4)
marginwidthsets the space between the left and right of the document content and the viewport (originally defined by Netscape 4)
topmargin/bottommarginInternet Explorer’s equivalent of
marginheight(allows us to set top and bottom margins separately)leftmargin/rightmarginInternet Explorer’s equivalent of
marginwidth(allows the setting of left and right margins separately)
Note that these attributes are no longer required to
achieve the visual effects they were originally intended for—the
equivalent CSS for these attributes is the margin
property (or margin-top,
margin-right, and so on), which is supported by all
browsers.
All XHTML web pages require a
body element, with the exception of frameset-based web pages, for which the appropriate frameset doctype must be declared. With
HTML syntax (even with a strict doctype), it’s possible to omit the
opening <body> and closing </body> tags
and it will still validate (the browser creates it in the DOM regardless),
but it’s best to include it nonetheless.
In HTML and XHTML, you
should not place character data (text) or inline elements such as
span, em, or
strong directly into the body.
Instead, these should be contained inside block-level elements such as
p elements, headings h1 -
h6 and so on. However, if you use a transitional HTML4
or XHTML1 doctype, it is permissible for
character data and inline elements to appear directly in the
body, but this is deprecated.
Example
The
body contains all the content that’s to be made visible
to the user:
<body> <h1>101 Ways to make a paper aeroplane</h1> <p>Let's start with the basics …</p> ⋮ </body>
Use This For …
Use
body to hold all the document content that you want to
be visible to the reader.
Compatibility
| Internet Explorer | Firefox | Safari | Opera | Chrome | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.5 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 3.1 | 4.0 | 9.2 | 9.5 | 10.0 | 2.0 |
| Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full | Full |
Every browser listed supports this element type.
In this Section
alink
sets the color of the active linkbackground
applies a repeating background image to the pagebgcolor
specifies the background color for the documentlink
sets the default color of links to unvisited web pagestext
sets the color of the body textvlink
sets the color of links to previously visited web pages
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