Deprecated Tags in HTML5
The recent set of browser updates have made it clear that the advent of HTML5 is now just a matter of time. With more and more HTML5 support being added by the browsers, it's time to prepare for the change. So I did a little research on the new tags and elements that are to be introduced by HTML5 and the ones that are to be made obsolete. To begin with, I have decided to create an exhaustive list of deprecated HTML4 tags, their usage and where applicable, their replacements in HTML5.
While I have gathered all I could from various sources, the list might still not be an exhaustive one. So if you feel I have missed out any go ahead and let me know and I will add them.
| Tags | Usage | Replacement |
|---|---|---|
| <acronym> | used to define acronyms in HTML 4.01. An acronym can be spoken as if it were a word, example NATO, NASA, ASAP, GUI | <abbr> |
| <applet> | was used to define an embedded applet | <object> |
| <basefont> | used to define a default font-color, font-size, or font-family for all the text in a document | CSS |
| <bgsound> | used to define background music or sound or audio element | <audio> |
| <big> | was used to make text bigger | CSS |
| <blink> | causes the text to blink repeatedly | |
| <center> | used to center align text and content | CSS |
| <dir> | used to define a directory list | <ul> |
| <fn> | used to define footnotes | <a href="#..."> tag with a hash (fragment) destination |
| <font> | used to specify font face, font size, and font color of text | CSS |
| <frame> | used to define one particular window (frame) within a frameset | |
| <frameset> | used to define a frameset, which organized multiple windows (frames) | |
| <isindex> | Defines a single-line input field | |
| <layer> | used to position and animate (through scripting) elements in a page | <iframe> |
| <ilayer> | used to create a layer that occupies space in the containing text flow | <iframe> |
| <marquee> | creates a scrolling display | |
| <nobr> | used to instruct the browser not to break the specified text | White space wrapping should be controlled using the CSS white-space property and line breaks should be created using the HTML break tag <br/> |
| <nolayer> | used in conjunction with the LAYER and ILAYER elements to indicate content/HTML markup that will only appear if the browser does not support the LAYER/ILAYER syntax | |
| <noframes> | used to display text for browsers that do not handle frames | |
| <plaintext> | used to render all text in the document exactly as it was typed in, including all tags and even the document tags | "<" and ">" characters to "<" and ">" respectively |
| <spacer> | used to create a block of white space within an html document | break tag, paragraph tag |
| <strike> | used to define strikethrough text | <del> / CSS |
| <tt> | used to define teletype text | CSS |
| <u> | used to define underlined text | CSS |
| <xmp> | used to define preformatted text | <pre> |
About the author
Written by Ranadeep
Web and technology enthusiast, struggling entrepreneur and hardcore webbie.
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