HTML 5 <main> Tag

The HTML <main> tag is used to represent the main content area within an HTML document.

The <main> tag surrounds the main content of the page - content that is unique to that document and is obviously the "main" content for that page. This excludes any content that is repeated across multiple pages (such as navigation bars, headers, footers, etc).

An HTML document can have more than one <main> element, but only one can be visible. If more than one <main> element is present in a document, all other instances must be hidden using the hidden attribute. Also, the <main> element must not appear within the <article>, <aside>, <footer>, <header> or <nav> tags.

The <main> tag was introduced in HTML 5.

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.