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Basic HTML – Deprecated Tags

March 6, 2011

There is a list of HTML tags that have been deprecated, meaning they are outdated and should be avoided. Since browsers in general are backwards compatible, those tags still work, but there is no guarantee that they will continue to do so. At least some of them will NOT be supported by HTML 5. And since using CSS is a much better, cleaner way to do things – then why NOT use it? After all, your 80s hairdo still works, but would you really????

And here is a list of the deprecated tags:

<applet> - (inserts an applet)
<basefont> - (sets the default font)
<center> - (centers text)
<dir> - (directory list)
<font> - (font, its size and color)
<isindex> - (searchable document index)
<menu> - (menu list)
<s> or <strike> - (both create strikethrough text)
<u> - (underline)
<xmp> - (preformatted text>

And here is the CSS for the most frequently still (ab)used of these dead tags. This is how it’s done nowadays:

<center>

text-align: center;

<font>

font-family: Baskerville, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;

(Note how ‘Times New Roman’ – a multi-word font name, is enclosed by quotes.)

<s> or <strike>

text-decoration: line-through;

<u>

text-decoration: underline;