The core attributes may be assigned to almost all HTML elements. They cannot be used with the elements belonging to the head section (<head> tag) and the <html> itself. Beside that there are other few minor differences to pay attention to.

Related elements:

id attribute:

All elements but BASE, HEAD, HTML, META, SCRIPT, STYLE, TITLE

class attribute:

All elements but BASE, BASEFONT, HEAD, HTML, META, PARAM, SCRIPT, STYLE, TITLE

style attribute:

All elements but BASE, BASEFONT, HEAD, HTML, META, PARAM, SCRIPT, STYLE, TITLE

title attribute:

All elements but BASE, BASEFONT, HEAD, HTML, META, PARAM, SCRIPT, TITLE

Attribute characteristics and purpose:

id attribute:

  • dedicates a name to an element and must be unique in a document
  • often used as an element's identifier for style sheets, scripts, target anchors or other server or client based interactions

class attribute:

  • assigns a class name to an element; any number of elements may share the same class name or names
  • mostly used for styling with style sheets or other type of referencing (via DOM programming)

style attribute:

  • specifies inline styles information for an element

title attribute:

  • description or summary of an element
  • most of the browsers will use this attribute as a "tool tip" that appears after "hovering" over the element

Example

HTML core attributes:

 

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