Using
instead of

Question

When I started learning HTML from w3schools, they were using this  . As I started learning ASP.NET, on their forum (ASP.NET Forums) I was told to use  . So I started using the second one.

My Question: What is the difference between   and  ? Is there something like browser support?

You can use whatever you are fine with, `
` the xhtml thing where you need to self close the tags, it's strict — Mr. Alien, Aug 22 '13 at 14:45
See this link: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?435290-difference-between-lt-br-gt-and-lt-br-gt — user2520969, Aug 22 '13 at 14:45
The link by @user2520969 is more preferable, as it has almost the answer I was hoping for. The link that was provided as a duplicate might look alike, but I am not sure it is a duplicate for that. However, might be a duplicate. And the answer of cdhowie helped me out by providing that example of XML. — Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan, Aug 22 '13 at 14:53

cdhowie · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-22T14:52:11.787

5

A lone   is invalid in XHTML, since XML documents must close each tag they open.   is semantically the same as   in XML documents, and is referred to as a self-closing tag, so   is used when writing XHTML, or HTML documents that will be read by an XML parser.

This applies to all other tags that do not have a closing tag in HTML, such as <hr /> and <meta />.

Both are valid HTML, so there is no reason not to use  , unless you are writing for a broken HTML parser.

Note that in XML,   is valid. However, older HTML parsers that don't know about self-closing tags have been known to choke on this. If a space is inserted before the tag name and the self-closing tag token (/) then these parsers see / as an attribute, or as noise that is discarded. Therefore, one should always make sure to put a space between the element name and the self-closing tag token for compatibility with these broken parsers.

edited Aug 22 '13 at 14:52

answered Aug 22 '13 at 14:46

cdhowie

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So that means, `
` usage is better? But what if I am not using XHTML, and neither I am using XML, is the usage of `
` legal? – Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan Aug 22 '13 at 14:47
@AfzaalAhmadZeeshan A proper HTML parser will consider both `
` and `
` as legal, yes. – cdhowie Aug 22 '13 at 14:47
@ironicaldiction There is no difference in HTML. `
` is preferred not because of some notion of style, but because it allows the document to be read using an XML parser. – cdhowie Aug 22 '13 at 14:48
So that means, `
` is not allowed in XML files, as they require a closing tag too. Nice anwer. – Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan Aug 22 '13 at 14:49
@AfzaalAhmadZeeshan Yes. You could write `
` but this would confuse older HTML parsers. The `
` syntax (including the space) is XML-compatible while also working well with older HTML parsers that don't understand self-closing tags. – cdhowie Aug 22 '13 at 14:53
@ironicaldiction, I just visited the page you are mentioning, and after that! I was forced to come to this site to ask what's the right way to use this tag. Nothing else. As in start they post the `
` then they use `
`. – Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan Aug 22 '13 at 14:55
However, I never meant to give a closing tag for `
`. Its just a line break. I was saying the XML needs to be closed, sorry you mis understood! – Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan Aug 22 '13 at 14:56
Afzaal, My earlier comment was irrelevant. Didn't mean to confuse you. – ironicaldiction Aug 22 '13 at 14:59
@cdhowie, please correct all your claims of
being fine and only confusing old parsers. It is simply not allowed to have closing tags for a selvclosing tag.
and
are the only valid ones. – Brunis Jul 26 '14 at 10:53
@Brunis No, that's [not true in XHTML 1.0](http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#C_2), though it can (and probably will) confuse user agents that can parse HTML, but not XHTML. If an XHTML parser does not understand `
` then it is a broken XHTML parser. – cdhowie Jul 28 '14 at 00:33
I read the grey box with the duplicate answer and saw HTML5, i realize this question was not standards specific. You are right. – Brunis Jul 28 '14 at 09:01

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 22 '13 at 14:45

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  is the valid way to do this in HTML, and   is the way to do it in XHTML.

answered Aug 22 '13 at 14:45

Arun C

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:21

1

This is a duplicate, but anyways, there is no difference other than preference, at least in HTML. In XML,   is more correct.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:21

Community

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answered Aug 22 '13 at 14:47

Mr. Shtuffs

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Using instead of

3 Answers3

Using
instead of