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.

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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.