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HTML body tag

Note: If you don't know what an element/tag is and/or how you must use it we recommend you read our HTML tags and attributes tutorial, which you can find in our HTML tutorials section.

Table of contents

Bypass table of contents

1 Description
2 Examples
3 Attributes
1. 3.1 id
2. 3.2 class
3. 3.3 style
4. 3.4 title
5. 3.5 lang
6. 3.6 dir
7. 3.7 bgcolor
8. 3.8 background
9. 3.9 text
10. 3.10 link
11. 3.11 vlink
12. 3.12 alink
4 Events

Bypass main content

Description

The HTML body element acts as a container for all the renderable content of the document.

The presentational attributes for the HTML body element ("bgcolor", "background", "text", "link", "vlink" and "alink") have been deprecated in HTML 4.01, since style sheets became the preferred way to define the presentational properties of a document.

Examples

The next example shows a basic document.

<html>
<head>
<title>Example for the HTML body tag</title>
</head>
<body>
Document's content.
</body>
</html>

Attributes

id (name)

The "id" attribute assigns an identifier to the associated element. This identifier must be unique in the document and can be used to refer to that element in other instances (e.g., from client-side scripts).

This is the first paragraph, named "paragraph1". To dynamically change its properties use this identifier.

class (cdata)

The "class" attribute assigns a class name (or a list of class names separated by spaces) to the container element. It is used together with style sheets and tells the browser the class (or classes) to which the element is associated.

A class gives presentational attributes to elements (read more at the Cascading Style Sheets tutorial).

This article is based on the book "Wind in the trees" by Jhon L. Brooks
This article is based on the book "Wind in the trees" by Jhon L. Brooks... and is more important than the one before.

style (style)

This attribute is used to define presentational attributes for the containing element, and its value should be composed by style sheets properties. Although in some cases it can become useful, a better practice is to place presentational attributes in external files, relating them to elements with the "class" attribute. This way you keep the semantic and presentational parts of your document separated.

You can find more information about presentational attributes at the Cascading Style Sheets tutorial.

This is a paragraph with a defined style.
And this is another text without style.

title (text)

The purpose of this attribute is to provide a title for the element. Its value must be a short and accurate description of the element. Browsers usually render it as a "tool tip" when the user puts the mouse pointer over the element for a short period of time.

Code

View

HTML code

lang (langcode)

Specifies the language of an element's content. The default value in "unknown".

When writing XHTML 1.0 documents, the attribute used to specify the language of an elements is "xml:lang". For forward and backward compatibility both attributes can be used simultaneously as in the example below. Note, that in XHTML 1.1 the "lang" attribute has been completely replaced by "xml:lang" and its use is no longer valid.

This is a paragraph in English.
Este es un párrafo en español.

dir

This attribute indicates the direction in which the texts of the element must be read. This includes content, attribute values and tables. It has two possible values that are case-insensitive:

RTL: Right to left.
LTR: Left to right.

<q lang="he" dir="rtl">...an Hebrew quotation...</q>