Optional Closing Tags in HTML

Zemfik · 03-01-2008, 02:19 PM

For as long as I've been validating web pages, I never realized that the closing </head> tag was optional in HTML. I feel as if I've missed the boat at times.

While I'm all for trimming excess code, I just cannot for the life of me strip out closing tags because they are optional in HTML. I'd be concerned that something, somewhere would not parse the document correctly if I removed the closing </head> element.

Are my concerns unfounded?

bogs · 03-02-2008, 06:04 PM

as far as i know even without </html> tag its still working...

Boogle · 03-03-2008, 01:45 AM

does it validte with w3c if you remove them?

nasty.web · 03-07-2008, 01:38 AM

Depends on DOCTYPE. In HTML 4.01 Strict head and html tags are optional. For example the following code is valid:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
<title>.</title><body><p>hello

Boogle · 03-07-2008, 01:42 AM

That's probably not a good idea in general to me since we should all be using XHTML standards anyway- still you learn somert new everyday and i wasn't aware of that!

Boog's