3 Uncommon but useful HTML elements

#webdev #codenewbie #html #javascript

1) `<abbr>`

The abbreviation <abbr> element is used to represent an acronym or abbreviation. If you include a title attribute, the text will be display as a tooltip on hover!

<p>
  The <abbr title="Product Detail Page">PDP</abbr> provides
  information on a specific product.
</p>

2) `<progress>`

The <progress> element will display a progress bar indicator that can be easily controlled with it's value attribute. The JavaScript in this example will incrementally fill our progress bar every 100ms as shown here:

<label for="progress">Progress:</label>
<progress id="progress" max="100" value="0"></progress>

<script>
  const progress = document.querySelector('#progress');
  let val = 0;

  setProgress();
  function setProgress() {
    if (val > 100) val = 0;
    progress.value = ++val;
    setTimeout(setProgress, 100);
  }
</script>

3) `<wbr>`

The word break opportunity <wbr> element will allow you to specify exactly where a line of text should break when there is overflow. For example, if we have a super long line of text like this URL, we can tell the browser where the text should break if it doesn't fit on one line:

<p>
http://is.this.just.real.life.com/is<wbr>/this/just/fantasy/caught/in/a/landslide/no/espace/from/reality
</p>

Yo! I post byte-sized tips like these often. Follow me if you crave more! 🍿

I'm on TikTok, Twitter and I have a new debugging course dropping soon!

Top comments (11)

Philippe Arteau • Oct 21 '21

<abbr title=""></abbr> works on dev.to markdown editor. Thanks for the tip.

JS Bits Bill • Oct 21 '21

That's awesome, didn't know that!

Philippe Arteau • Oct 21 '21

I have update my latest post to make use of this trick. 😂

JS Bits Bill • Oct 21 '21

Sick!! 😎

UchiTesting • Oct 25 '21

Yes. I use it in my notes for acronyms of all sort. I was initially looking for a dedicated markdown syntax but I did not find and this exists. HTML is allowed in markdown so it's cool.