Description

The align attribute is used to specify how the embed content (as defined by the src attribute) sits on the page in relation to surrounding text and other elements. It is a fairly rudimentary attribute - and a very presentational one - that allows you to move an object to the right or left, with text wrapping around accordingly (although with no surrounding white space, which generally results in quite an ugly result, possibly alleviated through the hspace attribute or with some CSS). You can also change the way that adjacent text aligns with the object such that the first line of the text aligns with the top, middle or bottom of the object.

The example markup shown with a left-aligned embed would appear as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Left-aligned embed content (containing a Flash video)

Aside from aligning "left" or "right", the align attribute is not very flexible when applied to an embed.

If an embed is aligned "left" or "right", text will continue to wrap around it until either:

• a br element with a clear attribute
• any other element with CSS property clear set to "left", "right" or "both"

Value

"absbottom", "absmiddle", "baseline", "left", "middle", "right", "texttop" and "top" only (browser default is "left").

Compatibility

This attribute is now deprecated, and is highly presentational in its nature. The desired visual effects can all be achieved with CSS and, as such, this attribute shouldn’t be used—it’s presented here for informational purposes only.