Deprecated and Obsolete Elements

This section describes HTML elements that are considered deprecated or obsolete in the latest versions of the HTML Specification. As a result, these elements should no longer be used. (Elements are considered deprecated when their use is discouraged; elements are obsolete when they are no longer supported.)

To ensure future compatibility, webpages and applications that rely on these elements should be modified to use modern practices and techniques.

In this section

Topic	Description
acronym	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use abbr instead.
wbr	Inserts a soft line break into a block of nobr text.
align	Sets or retrieves how the object is aligned with adjacent text.
align	Sets or retrieves the alignment of the object relative to the display or table.
align (Table caption, legend element)	Sets or retrieves the alignment of the caption or legend. This property is not supported for Windows apps using JavaScript.
align (Table, iframe elements)	Sets or retrieves a value that indicates the table alignment.
aLink	Sets or gets the color of all active links in the element.
applet	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used (use object element instead).
axis	Sets or retrieves a comma-delimited list of conceptual categories associated with the object.
background (Body element)	Sets or retrieves the background picture tiled behind the text and graphics on the page.
baseFont	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use CSS font properties instead.
bgColor	Deprecated. Sets or retrieves the background color behind the object.
bgColor	Deprecated. Sets or retrieves a value that indicates the background color behind the object.
bgSound	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use audio instead.
big	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use CSS font size instead.
cellPadding	Sets or retrieves the amount of space between the border of the cell and the content of the cell.
cellSpacing	Sets or retrieves the amount of space between cells in a table.
center	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use CSS text-align instead.
classid	Sets or retrieves the class identifier for the object.
code	Sets or retrieves the URL of the file containing the compiled Java class.
codeBase	Sets or retrieves the URL of the component.
codeType	Sets or retrieves the Internet media type for the code associated with the object.
compact	Sets or retrieves a Boolean value indicating whether the list should be compacted by removing extra space between list objects.
declare	Sets or retrieves a character string that can be used to implement your own declare functionality for the object.
dir	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use ul instead.
event	Sets or retrieves the event for which the script is written.
face	Sets or retrieves the current typeface family.
fgColor	Sets or gets the foreground (text) color of the document.
font	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use CSS font properties instead.
frame	Sets or retrieves the way the border frame around the table is displayed.
frame	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use iframe or CSS instead.
frameBorder	Sets or retrieves whether to display a border for the frame.
frameSet	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use iframe or CSS instead.
hspace	Sets or retrieves the horizontal margin for the object.
HTMLFrameElement	Implements the document object model (DOM) representation of the frame element.
HTMLNextIdElement	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use GUIDs instead to create unique values.
isIndex	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use form and input type=text field instead.
language	Sets or retrieves the language in which the current script is written. Note This has been superceded by the type attribute for the script element. If you are using javascript alone, you don't need to specify a type or language with the script element.
link	Sets or gets the color of the document links for the object.
listing	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use HTMLPreElement, code or CSS instead.
marginHeight	Sets or retrieves the top and bottom margin heights before displaying the text in a frame.
marginWidth	Sets or retrieves the left and right margin widths before displaying the text in a frame.
marquee	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use CSS animation instead.
nextID	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used.
noBR	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used.
noFrames	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used.
noShade	Sets or retrieves whether the horizontal rule is drawn with 3-D shading.
noWrap	Sets or retrieves whether the browser automatically performs wordwrap.
plainText	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use the pre element or CSS instead.
rev	Sets or retrieves the relationship between the object and the destination of the link.
rules	Sets or retrieves which dividing lines (inner borders) are displayed.
scheme	Sets or retrieves a scheme to be used in interpreting the value of a property specified for the object.
scope	Sets or retrieves the group of cells in a table to which the object's information applies.
scrolling	Sets or retrieves whether the frame can be scrolled.
size	Sets or retrieves the height of the hr object.
size	Sets or retrieves the font size of the object.
standby	Sets or retrieves a message to be displayed while an object is loading.
start (OL element)	Sets or retrieves the starting number for an ordered list.
strike	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use the del element or CSS textDecoration instead.
summary	Sets or retrieves a description and/or structure of the object.
text (Body element)	Sets or gets the text (foreground) color for the document body.
tt	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use CSS font properties instead.
type (ul,li,ol elements)	Sets or retrieves the style of the list.
vAlign	Sets or retrieves how text and other content are vertically aligned within the object that contains them.
value (LI element)	Sets or retrieves the value of a list item.
valueType	Sets or retrieves the data type of the value attribute.
version (HtmlElement)	Sets or retrieves the Document Type Definition (DTD) version that governs the current document.
vLink	Sets or gets the color of links in the object that have already been visited.
vrml	Sets or retrieves the URL of the virtual reality modeling language (VRML) world to be displayed in the window.
vspace	Sets or retrieves the vertical margin for the object.
width (Block element)	Sets or gets a value that you can use to implement your own width functionality for the object.
xmp	This element is obsolete and should no longer be used. Use CSS font or whiteSpace instead.