html

Summary

The HTML root element (<html>) represents the root of an HTML or XHTML document. All other elements must be descendants of this element.

Usage context

Permitted content	One <head> element, followed by one <body> element.
Tag omission	The start tag may be omitted if the first thing inside the <html> element is not a comment. The end tag may be omitted if the <html> element is not immediately followed by a comment, and it contains a <body> element either that is not empty, or whose start tag is present.
Permitted parent elements	None.
Normative document	HTML 5, section 4.1.1; HTML 4.01, section 7.3

Attributes

Like all HTML elements, this element supports the global attributes.

manifest HTML5 Requires Gecko 1.9

Specifies the URI of a resource manifest indicating resources that should be cached locally. See Offline resources in Firefox for details.

version Deprecated since HTML4.01 Obsolete since HTML5

Specifies the version of the HTML Document Type Definition that governs the current document. This attribute is not needed, because it is redundant with the version information in the document type declaration.

Example

The DOCTYPE used in the following example indicates HTML5.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>...</head>
  <body>...</body>
</html>

Notes

Since the <html> element is the first in a document other than comments, it is called the root element. Although this tag can be implied, or not required, with HTML, it is required to be opened and closed in XHTML.

DOM interface

• HTMLHtmlElement

Browser compatibility

See also

• MathML top-level element: <math>
• SVG top-level element: <svg>