Name

<BODY> — NN all IE all HTML all

Synopsis

<BODY>...</BODY>

End Tag: Optional

After all of the prefatory material in the HEAD portion of an HTML file, the BODY element contains the genuine content of the page that the user sees in the browser window (or may hear when browsers know how to speak to users). Before style sheets, the BODY element was the place where page authors could specify document-wide color and background schemes. A great many favorite attributes covering these properties are deprecated in HTML 4, in favor of style sheet rules that may be applied to the BODY element. Support for all these attributes, however, will remain in Navigator and Internet Explorer for years to come.

The BODY element is also where window object event handlers are placed. For example, a window object as defined in most document object models has an onLoad event handler that fires when a document has finished loading into the current window or frame. Assigning that event handler as an element attribute is done in the BODY element.

Although it may appear from a variety of implications that the BODY element is the document object, this is not entirely true. The document object has additional properties (such as the document.title) that are defined outside of the BODY element in an HTML document. Also, most browsers don’t quibble when you omit either or both the start and end tags. But if you are debugging a page, it’s helpful to see the end tags for the BODY and HTML elements when viewing the ...

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