HTML 5 <div> Tag

The HTML <div> tag is used for defining a section of your document. With the <div> tag, you can group large sections of HTML elements together and format them with CSS.

The difference between the <div> tag and the <span> tag is that the <div> tag is used with block-level elements whilst the <span> tag is used with inline elements.

HTML 4 vs HTML 5

In HTML 4.01 documents, the <div> tag was often used for specifying the various navigational sections of the HTML document (such as the header, footer, content area, side bars, etc).

The HTML 5 specification has introduced a number of new elements that can (and should) be used instead of the <div> element. Examples of these new elements include <article>, <aside>, <header>, and <footer>, as well as others.

Therefore, the <div> element should generally be used as an extension mechanism which is used only if there isn't another suitable HTML element to use.

Demo

Attributes

HTML tags can contain one or more attributes. Attributes are added to a tag to provide the browser with more information about how the tag should appear or behave. Attributes consist of a name and a value separated by an equals (=) sign, with the value surrounded by double quotes. Here's an example, style="color:black;".

There are 3 kinds of attributes that you can add to your HTML tags: Element-specific, global, and event handler content attributes.

The attributes that you can add to this tag are listed below.

Element-Specific Attributes

The following table shows the attributes that are specific to this tag/element.

AttributeDescription
None 

Global Attributes

The following attributes are standard across all HTML 5 tags (although the tabindex attribute does not apply to dialog elements).

For a full explanation of these attributes, see HTML 5 global attributes.

Event Handler Content Attributes

Event handler content attributes enable you to invoke a script from within your HTML. The script is invoked when a certain "event" occurs. Each event handler content attribute deals with a different event.

For a full list of event handlers, see HTML 5 event handler content attributes.