60 elements remain.

November 28, 2007 5:06 PM

How many HTML elements can you name in five minutes?
posted by divabat (68 comments total)

71. Not sure I'm proud of this.
posted by matthewr at 5:13 PM on November 28, 2007

55. And I forgot about <font>, which actually makes me sort of proud.

p.s. community sideblog
posted by metaly at 5:15 PM on November 28, 2007

I got about half of the ones that I know and regularly use.
posted by aubilenon at 5:17 PM on November 28, 2007

I missed the img tag.
posted by tepidmonkey at 5:17 PM on November 28, 2007 [13 favorites]

I remembered font, but I forgot every table-related tag until there were 2 seconds left. I'd be proud of that if 1) font was the only deprecated tag I remembered, but I actually got almost all of them (basefont?), and 2) tables weren't useful and totally acceptable, even in a Web 6.0 world.
posted by Plutor at 5:19 PM on November 28, 2007

Do you really need more than span, div and CSS?
posted by null terminated at 5:20 PM on November 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

I make my living doing this, and only got 50. My clients clearly aren't getting their money's worth. On the other hand, one just paid me to take that test.

(If you're my client, I'm kidding! It's another client who paid for that.)
posted by maxwelton at 5:23 PM on November 28, 2007 [4 favorites]

That was fun. Again!
posted by Soup at 5:24 PM on November 28, 2007

I only got 25, but then, I haven't written in HTML in years (excepting the occasional <small> here on MeFi).

And (Sorry, no blink or marquee tags)?

Weak. The internet's pulse flashes in time to the blink tag.
posted by quin at 5:33 PM on November 28, 2007

33. I suck.
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:35 PM on November 28, 2007

Is this a geek test?
posted by caddis at 5:35 PM on November 28, 2007

56. But at least I didn't forget the cite tag, which is more than the XHTML 2.0 working group can say.

The code tag? The one I just used there? And again here? Forgot that one. Dammit.
posted by enn at 5:36 PM on November 28, 2007

No love for blink or marquee?
posted by drezdn at 5:37 PM on November 28, 2007

That's what I get for not reading the whole sentence (I'm at 60).
posted by drezdn at 5:41 PM on November 28, 2007

42. A lot of what I missed I've never even seen; I think my body rejected a number of the frame- and script-related entities on principle, too.

But I forgot div and span. I'm not sure how I managed that.

And, shame of shames:

I forgot <img>.
posted by cortex at 5:41 PM on November 28, 2007

43. The only one I forgot that I've used was TEXTAREA.
posted by infinitewindow at 5:45 PM on November 28, 2007

65. I missed font, and most of the more obscure ones that I've never needed to use, ever (basefont, etc.).
posted by Godbert at 5:49 PM on November 28, 2007

51. I FORGOT ALL THE FORM ELEMENTS. Clearly I am not fit for Web 2.0.
posted by chrominance at 5:49 PM on November 28, 2007

Me too, chrominance!

It's probably because of

posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:06 PM on November 28, 2007

Input tags stripped, of course. I meant to say "incompetence". At least I know "<small>".
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:07 PM on November 28, 2007

I missed the img tag.
posted by tepidmonkey

Hey, we all miss the img tag.
posted by The Deej at 6:08 PM on November 28, 2007 [3 favorites]

7.

*slinks away*
posted by Rhaomi at 6:08 PM on November 28, 2007

49

Proud to have forgotten frameset, fieldset not so much.
posted by grubby at 6:15 PM on November 28, 2007

this thread is worthless without <img>s.
posted by caddis at 6:16 PM on November 28, 2007

Up until about a year ago, I honestly thought HTML was short for "Hotmail."

Needless to say, I did not even bother taking this test.
posted by flarbuse at 6:18 PM on November 28, 2007 [3 favorites]

0. And I work for a large and paranoid corporation in the Pacific Northwest.

I didn't understand what exactly an "HTML element" was, and now I do know, I might come up with a few image extension names, but that's it.
posted by marvin at 6:31 PM on November 28, 2007

68. got all the frame ones, but missed freaking hr & applet.
what the heck is "q"?
posted by juv3nal at 6:44 PM on November 28, 2007

I redeemed myself with 98% on the Booze Quiz on the same site.

On second thoughts that's maybe not so much a redemption as an explanation.
posted by grubby at 6:48 PM on November 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

what the heck is "q"?

Ah, yes, the deprecated quonsar tag.
posted by wendell at 6:54 PM on November 28, 2007

Hey, it deprecated itself.
posted by cortex at 6:58 PM on November 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

quonsar tag - one of the funnier moments here. I never understood how this relatively innocuous joke pushed Matt over the edge while he seemed to be able to ignore blatant pokes in the eye, unless of course those tags had to be removed by hand, one at a time. Matt's good nature and judgment have always been some of this site's greatest assets.
posted by caddis at 7:19 PM on November 28, 2007

18! What? If asked beforehand, I would have said "I know five." Apparently my brain is holding out on me.
posted by SassHat at 7:24 PM on November 28, 2007

Oh yeah! The quonsar tag! Good times. Sadly, the Deej tag got no attention, positive or negative.
posted by The Deej at 7:51 PM on November 28, 2007

One! use <DIV> for everything!

</DIV purist&gt
posted by Artw at 7:59 PM on November 28, 2007

Drat.

Oddly when I took the test I forgot to include every single table tag.
posted by Artw at 8:06 PM on November 28, 2007

40. I only recognized five that I missed, so I'm okay with that. My brain is functioning properly.
posted by danb at 8:50 PM on November 28, 2007

49. At least I remembered the meta tag.
posted by o0o0o at 9:43 PM on November 28, 2007

Other than the obscure ones (like "cite") I did pretty well amongst the ones I use.

Oddly enough, though I spend much more time coding CSS, I missed about 1/2 of the ones on The CSS Quiz.

Though, to be fair, those can be even more obscure once you take into account all the aural properties.

tip for taking the CSS quiz : things like border and border-left, et al are two different properties
posted by revmitcz at 11:01 PM on November 28, 2007

I make my living at this, and only got 53. On the other hand, most of the ones I didn't get you wouldn't catch me dead using (font? frameset? center? hell no.)

On the other hand, I forgot optgroup, and I used that today. Sigh.
posted by davejay at 11:32 PM on November 28, 2007

I have a machine which remembers these things for me.

I forget what it's called.
posted by Clave at 12:21 AM on November 29, 2007

39.

I missed H1-H6, which really hurt me.
posted by JZig at 12:24 AM on November 29, 2007

I got 70. Forgot ACRONYM, ADDRESS, BDO, BR, CODE, COLGROUP, DFN, DIR, FIELDSET, ISINDEX, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LINK, MENU, PARAM, Q, SAMP, SELECT, TFOOT, VAR.

Didn't know we weren't allowed to use <multicol> anymore..
posted by lodev at 1:06 AM on November 29, 2007

I got 56, forgetting ACRONYM, AREA, BASE, BASEFONT, BDO, BIG, CAPTION, CENTER, DEL, DFN, FIELDSET, FONT, HR, INS, ISINDEX, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, MAP, MENU, NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT, OPTGROUP, PARAM, SELECT, SMALL, STRIKE, STYLE, SUB, SUP, TBODY, TD, TFOOT, THEAD, VAR.

I didn't realize that some of these, like BIG and SMALL were in the standard. I also had never heard of BDO before.
posted by grouse at 1:24 AM on November 29, 2007

Do you really need more than span, div and CSS?

Yes: <style>
posted by ryanrs at 1:53 AM on November 29, 2007

Noooooooooooo! Use links to your stylesheets in separate files.
posted by grouse at 2:29 AM on November 29, 2007

Noooooooooooo! Use links to your stylesheets in separate files.

In which case you still need a <link> element.
posted by bent back tulips at 3:32 AM on November 29, 2007

Yeah, but to make well-formed HTML, I think you'll need HTML, HEAD, and BODY as well. Hopefully TITLE too.
posted by grouse at 3:37 AM on November 29, 2007

31. I am teh suck. But not a geek!
posted by triv at 5:08 AM on November 29, 2007

13. Hey, at least I was ingenious enough to type every single letter of the alphabet after noticing the way it works.
posted by ersatz at 5:11 AM on November 29, 2007

bent back tulips: "Noooooooooooo! Use links to your stylesheets in separate files.

In which case you still need a <link> element."

Not to mention <head>, <html>, and <body>.
posted by Plutor at 5:17 AM on November 29, 2007

*waves to Plutor*
posted by grouse at 5:25 AM on November 29, 2007

All you need is the
<?php ... ?>
*

Amirite?



*Plus the html, head, body, etc...
posted by drezdn at 6:31 AM on November 29, 2007

Lemme see... <HTML>, <HEAD>, <META>, <TITLE>, <LINK>, <SCRIPT>, <BODY>, <A>, <DIV>, <SPAN>, <FORM>, <INPUT>, <SELECT>, <OPTION>, <TEXTAREA>.

I could probably get away with only using those 15 as a minimum, though I'd probably want to throw in <H1>, <H2>, <P>, <I> and <B> as well. (I never got the <STRONG> and <EM> thing). Occasionaly I'll break out a fancy semantically appropriate tag as well, but not often.

Oh, and I suppose I do break down and use a table here and there, and frames and iframes have their uses...

Oh and <OBJECT>. and <EMBED>, and <PARAM>.

So thats, what, 28 I actually use? That's more than I would have guessed.
posted by Artw at 7:28 AM on November 29, 2007

1, and I first and to look up the meaning of HTML element.
posted by aerotive at 7:38 AM on November 29, 2007

had not and. And metafilter desperately needs comment editing.
posted by aerotive at 7:39 AM on November 29, 2007

grouse: "*waves to Plutor*"

Yes, yes, but I said it better.
posted by Plutor at 8:20 AM on November 29, 2007

Let's discuss STRONG/B/EM/I again!
posted by Plutor at 8:20 AM on November 29, 2007

Discussion of strong/b/em/i has been deprecated by the w3c.
posted by cortex at 8:34 AM on November 29, 2007

For the truly hardcore, Name All 122 CSS Properties.
posted by matthewr at 8:41 AM on November 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

Gah, I forgot the list tags, so it's more like 31. I actually use those quite a lot, and theres something kind of enjoyable about doing weird things to them using CSS.

Because of the nature of the products I'm working on these days (gadgety/widgety type things) I'm pretty much working exclusively in Javascript these days, adding elements to the page dynamically rather than working on straight HTML, and it's been kind of an interesting experience. You get really miserly with the number of tags and attributes you use and then get really creative with your use of CSS. The use of DIVs instead of TABLEs stops being a nicety and becomes a necessity so I'm pretty glad I was trying to take my code in that direction anyway.
posted by Artw at 9:40 AM on November 29, 2007

I forgot H1-H6 and all the form elements but, bizarrely, remembered TT, PRE, and APPLET.

I should be fired.
posted by bluishorange at 10:22 AM on November 29, 2007

Oh man. I thought I was going to be really ashamed to see my results for the CSS quiz, but it turns out most of the ones I missed I'd never even heard of.

Also seriously, if you're so OCD that you need stuff like border-right-style and border-right-width instead of some efficient combinations of border and border-right, you need help (but are probably an awesome Web designer).
posted by metaly at 10:56 AM on November 29, 2007

Man, I suck at timed recall-memory tests. I hate it when they show you the results and you recognize all of them.
posted by moonbiter at 12:35 PM on November 29, 2007

What, no PLAINTEXT?
posted by cillit bang at 3:38 PM on November 29, 2007

Whoa.
posted by matthewr at 4:44 PM on November 29, 2007

Okay, so <plaintext> doesn't work on Mefi.
posted by matthewr at 4:45 PM on November 29, 2007

63. and i almost forgot about fucking frames. noframes!
posted by mrgrimm at 6:42 PM on November 29, 2007

68. How can I remember <menu>, which no-one has ever used for anything, but not <html>? FFS.
posted by BobInce at 8:15 AM on November 30, 2007