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7 Cool HTML Elements Nobody Uses

Tapajyoti Bose on October 02, 2022

Searching for cool HTML elements, especially if you don't know what you're looking for, is often like being thrown into a pile of garbage Don't ...

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Oskar Grosser • Oct 3 '22

When talking about "elements nobody uses":
In point 2 you could have used the <dfn> Definition element to show what term you are explaining (the Pythagorean Theorem) instead of using the <strong> element.

Devang Tomar • Oct 2 '22

These are really useful! Thanks for sharing 🙌

Dániel Sebestyén • Oct 6 '22

I have just refactored an app component that used infinite amount of divs and spans for displaying interactive elements on a map like image.
Using map and areas was a piece of cake and it became instantly accessible just by using semantically correct elements 🤘
The end result: removal of 800 lines of code and avoided using 2 libraries (gzipped ~210kb) just to solve a problem that is already solved 😁

El Náufrago ॐ • Dec 12 '22 • Edited

Thanks for sharing!

Amir-cahyadi • Oct 3 '22

Useful 👍❤️

Todd Pressley • Oct 3 '22

great article! you know what else i don’t see much in the wild? the dialog element!

Junior Hernandez • Oct 3 '22

That has a reason. MDN says that Safari adopted it in version 15.4 and Firefox in 98, while Chromium supports it since version 37. So support in all browsers started very recently. Due to the lack of support, it is not as popular. 😁

BaasMurdo • Oct 4 '22

I knew about most, but at the same time forgot about most 😅
Great post !

Jonas Pfalzgraf • Oct 4 '22

 You never stop learning, a really great post ^^

Thomas Bnt ☕ • Oct 3 '22

Abbr is really cool to using!

HarvyDenth • Oct 2 '22

Wow, I should definitely try it

jthomp • Oct 5 '22

Didn't know about <details>! Thanks for the post.

Gamerseo • Oct 3 '22

It is worth paying attention to details to distinguish our website.

Tue • Oct 3 '22

Saving!

Marco Boelling • Oct 4 '22

Nice ;)

sajedsoliman • Oct 9 '22

Thank you so much for doing the dirty work for us ❤
This really helpful

DLillard0 • Oct 8 '22

awesome

Taha Ben Masaud • Oct 7 '22

A great post and really useful. Thanks

this-is-matt • Oct 6 '22

Very nice! It was a great reminder.

Model Husband 👑 • Oct 6 '22

Thanks for sharing, they are useful 💯

Marc • Oct 5 '22 • Edited

I Never did select again since datalist exist, one of thé best HTML components

Efosa Collins EVBOWE • Oct 6 '22

That datalist element would be my saviour

Anirban Majumdar • Oct 6 '22

Amazing thanks for sharing

HackNetAyush • Oct 3 '22

Meter, Map & Area are extremely useful! ❤

Maame Afia Fordjour • Oct 5 '22

Great piece!

Dmitry • Oct 6 '22

Very helpful article. Thanks, Tapajyoti

Mobarak Ali • Oct 5 '22

Nice Article!

msiame1 • Oct 4 '22

Very usful. Thanks for sharing!

Ashley Sheridan • Nov 15 '22

There are a lot more tags in HTML that are rarely used. MDN lists a total of 114 current (not deprecated) tags. I'd say in general we probably only use a third of those at most.

To help, I made a tool to pick the most suitable HTML tag for any given purpose, all based off of a (quite complex) flowchart.

Julie Lewis • Oct 6 '22 • Edited

<map> and <area> are never used for a reason. They are horrible for accessibility, and I would think difficult to make responsive. I don't think I have used an image map this century.

I'll be checking out <object> though.

Another one that people forget about is definition lists. <dl>,<dt>,<dd>. If you've ever wished you could nest block elements in a bulleted list - like when your content creators looove multi-sentence bullets - definition lists are for you.