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Style sheets

Style sheet properties

Deprecated tags

HTML is an evolving system of mark-up tags, and like everything that evolves, this means shedding old things as well as picking up new characteristics. As improved methods are developed, so some old tags are deprecated; that is, no longer recommended for use by the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium - the body responsible for setting the standards and protocols which make the Web a functioning network).

Deprecated tags (and attributes) don't suddenly stop working overnight. You'll find in the list below several tags and attributes which I've introduced on this site, and used myself, in many cases. In part this is because the reason many of these are deprecated is because they've been superseded by style sheet controls for presentation attributes: colour, alignment, background images, and so on. But some older browsers do not support style sheets, and in some cases, it remains easier and more efficient to use attributes. If you want an accessible, readable site - as several other pages in this lesson have argued - you still require a familiarity with these tags and attributes. It would have been very silly of me not to teach them at all. As the HTML 4.0 specification says, browsers "should continue to support deprecated elements for reasons of backwards compatibilty". In other words to ensure a page can be read by old browsers as well as new ones.

But anyone taking web design at all seriously should be well aware of which tags are deprecated as these may in future become obsolete. They should therefore be used sparingly if at all. This particularly applies to the first one on this list below:

Deprecated tags

. You've already been advised that this is perhaps the clunkiest of all common tags. Minimise its use even if you're not using style sheets, and it should be the first thing you think about ditching if and when you do.
<CENTER>. Use a <DIV> or class with centre alignment defined in a style sheet.
- but curiously, not or . This mainly reflects the point that underlining is confusing on a web page in ways the other two are not, as the convention is to underline links. Use the text-decoration element in a style sheet.
<S> and <STRIKE> - again, use text-decoration if you want "struck-through" text.
These tags have not been introduced on this site but are also deprecated: <APPLET> <BASEFONT> <DIR> <ISINDEX> <MENU>.

Please also see the "important note" at the bottom of the page on the <IMG> tag.

Deprecated attributes

This list is more extensive. As a rough guide, almost all attributes that endow stylistic features only are deprecated. The list below should make the distinction clear, but the basic rule is, if it can go in a style sheet, it really should, and the attribute is deprecated. But an attribute that is not stylistic (such as ALT, HREF, SRC) will remain part of the standard. Mind you, this isn't a hard and fast rule: an attribute like CELLPADDING (which could be replicated by padding elements in style sheets) has not yet been officially deprecated. Don't ask me why...

Note that attributes which have not appeared anywhere on this web site are not listed below. Explanatory notes are added where necessary.

ALIGN - deprecated in all cases (paragraphs, headings, images, tables, etc...)
BACKGROUND, BGCOLOR - for whole pages or tables
BORDER - for images (but not tables, apparently)
COLOR - for the tag (which itself is deprecated)
FACE - likewise
HEIGHT - deprecated for tables, but not for images where it is still very useful
LINK - in the <BODY> tag, e.g., to define the colour of links
NOSHADE - for the <HR> tag
SIZE - in both the and <HR> tags
START - in ordered lists
TEXT - in the <BODY> tag
type - in ordered and unordered lists
VLINK - in the <BODY> tag
WIDTH - for horizontal rules and tables but not images.

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Material on this site is © Drew Whitworth, 2005 Permission will usually be given to reproduce material from this site for non-commercial purposes, if credit is given. For enquiries, e-mail Drew at andrew [dot] whitworth [at] manchester [dot] ac [dot] uk.