I am looking to develop a list of HTML tags that are not often used by website owners, but are still important to use in good website design.  Please add to this list as you wish, but do so in the following format:

<TAG> - Explanation of what the tag does. Example Use.

<acronym> - The acronym tag allows for a website to explain what an acronym stands for.  For example, the acronym SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  However, when the spider comes to your website, all it will see is SEO which may mean various things.  The acronym tag will allow you to add this keyword to your text.  The use of this tag should look like this: <acronym title=”search engine optimization”>seo</acronym>.

<caption> - Although using tables to determine the layout of your website is becoming a practice that will soon be extinct, tables will still be necessary.  The caption tag allows you to identify what a specific table is about.  An example: <caption>Table 3.2.  Raw Sales Data</caption>

<code> - If you ever want to display programming code on your site, you should use the code tag which will set that text off as being programming code.  Example: <code><?php echo “this is a code example”;?></code>

The H Tags – H1 tags have become popular in SEO circles once website owners learned that Google did pay attention to this tag.  However, there are actually 6 different heading tags.  The H1 tag is the most important while the H6 tag is the least important.  If a search engine were to try to form a table of contents from a website, it should be able to do so from the H tags.

<EM> - Indicates Emphasis.  Browser will render this as bolder text.

Example:  <em>This Text Would Appear somewhat bold</em>             

<STRONG> - Indicates stronger Emphasis.

Example:   <strong>This would appear even bolder</strong>           

<CITE> - Indicates that the enclosed text represents a citation of another work

Example:  <csite>Doe, J. (). Blah blah. 2nd Ed ed. : Publisher.</csite>             

<DFN> - Indicates that the attribute defines the enclosed tag.  Also cause the browser to render in Itallics

Example:   <dfn title="Brutal Death Metal Band">Cannibal Corpse</dfn> is the top selling Death Metal Band of All Time.           

<SAMP> - Indicates that the enclosed text is sample output for example from a script, an error message, a directory listing something like that.  Don't use it with TrueType fonts or it looks funny.

Example: <samp>RUNTIME ERROR:  -5<samp>             

<KBD> - Indicates text that you want the user to type

Example:  To remove the file type this: <kbd>rm ./-foo </kbd>

<fieldset> - Used for forms.  Unlike the <form> element which is functional, <fieldset> allows you to define specific parts of forms.  For example, within a single form, you may have an address section, a credit card section, website information section, etc.

Example: - <fieldset>
<legend>Personal information</legend>
input elements go here
</fieldset>

<legend> - Used with fieldsets to label what a set of fields is about.  See example above.

Not exactly html, but it's long-lost css:

p:first-letter {
font-weight: bold;
}

A selector to change the style of the first letter of every paragraph.

Andy.

Andy,

Isn't that CSS2?  Does IE support that?

yes sorry - css2. IE supports it - tried it on IE6. Firefox obviously does too.

Was one of the ones that's so rarely used. I wonder if if works for the first word too?

rel="nofollow"  --  this is a new attribute to the anchor tag.

The search engines will not follow the hyperlinks with this attribute, which will stop your PR from transferring to those links. This attribute was especially made to reduce the comment spamming in the blogs.

This attribute was found by Google earlier this year, Yahoo Search and MSN search are also supporting it.

read more about it on Google

http://www.google.com/googleblog/2005/0 … -spam.html

Nothing to add here, but I figure, since it's two years later, I bet some know more to add to the list. (Just bumping this up, in hopes of more html knowledge.

atwhatcost wrote:

Nothing to add here, but I figure, since it's two years later, I bet some know more to add to the list. (Just bumping this up, in hopes of more html knowledge.

Hey, Thanks for bumping this. very interesting stuff.

I knew a few of these, like <em> and <strong> but didnt know there was actually any difference. I always just stick with <b> as it looks the same. Maybe i should change my ways alittle, <food4thought>might have some decent SEO effects.</food4thought>

actually, <em> makes text italics, not bold.

In the realm of tables (preferably real tables instead of formatting tables, but works both ways)

<col /> for formatting specific columns - allows you to accurately set column widths (usually in css) before the table is drawn

<colgroup> for formatting a group of columns

EDIT: I should mention that the <col /> tag should be used within a <colgroup> tag

definition lists

DL,
DD
DT

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/lists.html#edef-DL

Wow... talk about digging something out of the grave!

However, when I was reading it, I thought that the <cite> tag actually might have some use, depending on G-bots reasoning of course.

Not that I have this problem.... but, wasn't there some big hissy that occurred cause drop shippers were using the manufacturers product description, then getting flagged for duplicate content?

Wouldn't you use this tag, or something like it, to clarify that it's not your own writing?

^... defines superscript text

nybc wrote:

^... defines superscript text

Oh goodie! Digging this out is working! I love <col> idea! Can't wait until CSS stops looking Greek, now that html is beginning to look English to me!

This is a question, not an addition -- if ^... = superscript text, then, by any chance, does  = subscript text?!

Ding, ding, ding...   Give the woman a prize!

Yep, that is a valid assumption.  The <sub> tag is for subscript.

(and no, I'm not trying to be mean )

i thought the <em> tag was used to define the size of text, in place of the size attribute.... im sure i had to use it like that somewhere..... who has time to google it?

<em> stands for Emphasis.  I do use it from time to time when I want italics (instead of the older <i> tag).

You may be thinking about the em font measurement in CSS used like:

p {font-size:2em;}

<RTP1></RTP1>Rank This Page Number 1 for the search terms written between tags.
Isn't there any such tags? If there were it would be great