LABEL - Form Field Label

Syntax

<LABEL>...</LABEL>

Attribute Specifications

FOR=IDREF (associated form field)
ACCESSKEY=Character (shortcut key)
ID=string
CLASS=string
STYLE=string
TITLE=string
LANG=Language (i.e. RU - Russian)
DIR=ltr|rtl
SCRIPTING EVENTS=string
ONFOCUS=Script (element received focus)
ONBLUR=Script (element lost focus)

Contents

Inline elements except LABEL

Contained in

Block-level elements, inline elements except BUTTON

Description

The LABEL element associates a label with a form control. By associating labels with form controls, authors give important hints to users of speech browsers while also allowing visual browsers to duplicate common GUI features (e.g., the ability to click on a text label to select a radio button or checkbox).

Each LABEL element is associated with exactly one form control. The element's content is the label of the form control and may include inline elements such as IMG and STRONG.

FOR

The FOR attribute explicitly specifies the control associated with the LABEL. The value of the FOR attribute must match the value of the associated form control's ID attribute. In the absence of the FOR attribute, the LABEL must contain the associated form control. This method of implicit association is convenient in many cases, but not an option when the form control and its label are in different table cells, paragraphs, or divisions. The following example illustrates both explicit and implicit label associations:

<TABLE>
  <TR>
    <TD>
      <LABEL FOR=user ACCESSKEY=U>User</LABEL>
    </TD>
    <TD>
      <SELECT NAME=user ID=user>
        <OPTION>Jean</OPTION>
        <OPTION>Kim</OPTION>
        <OPTION>Brian</OPTION>
      </SELECT>
    </TD>
  </TR>
  <TR>
    <TD><LABEL FOR=passwd ACCESSKEY=P>Password</LABEL></TD>
    <TD><INPUT TYPE=password NAME=password ID=passwd></TD>
  </TR>
</TABLE>
<P>
  <LABEL ACCESSKEY=S>
    <INPUT TYPE=checkbox NAME=save VALUE=yes>
    Save user name and password in a cookie
  </LABEL>
</P>
<P>
  <LABEL ACCESSKEY=C>
    Comments to post:
    <TEXTAREA NAME=comments ROWS=8 COLS=50></TEXTAREA>
  </LABEL>
</P>

ACCESSKEY

The ACCESSKEY attribute, used throughout the preceding example, specifies a single Unicode character as a shortcut key for giving focus to the LABEL, which passes the focus on to the associated form control. Entities (e.g. é) may be used as the ACCESSKEY value.

ONFOCUS & ONBLUR

The LABEL element also takes a number of attributes to specify client-side scripting actions for various events. In addition to the core events common to most elements, LABEL accepts the following event attributes:

ONFOCUS, when the element receives focus;
ONBLUR, when the element loses focus.

The ID attribute uniquely identifies an element within a document. No two elements can have the same ID value in a single document. The attribute's value must begin with a letter in the range A-Z or a-z and may be followed by letters (A-Za-z), digits (0-9), hyphens ("-"), underscores ("_"), colons (":"), and periods (".").

The following example uses the ID attribute to identify each of the first two paragraphs of a document:

My first paragraph. My second paragaph.

The paragraphs in the example could have style rules associated with them through their ID attributes. The following Cascading Style Sheet defines unique colors for the two paragraphs:

P#firstp {
  color: navy;
  background: transparent
}

P#secondp {
  color: black;
  background: transparent
}

The paragraphs in the initial example could also be used as a target anchor for links:

See <A HREF="#firstp">the opening paragraph</A> for more information.

Note that most browsers do not support the ID attribute for link anchors. For current browsers, authors should use <A NAME>...</A> within the element instead of ID.

Since ID and NAME share the same name space, authors cannot use the same value for an ID attribute and a NAME attribute in the same document. Also note that while NAME may contain entities, the ID attribute value may not.

CLASS

The CLASS attribute specifies the element to be a member of one or more classes. Classes allow authors to define specific kinds of a given element. For example, an author could use <CODE CLASS=Java> when giving Java code and <CODE CLASS=Perl> when giving Perl code.

Unlike with the ID attribute, any number of elements can share the same class. An element may also belong to multiple classes; the CLASS attribute value is a space-separated list of class names.

Note that most current browsers do not support multiple classes. Such browsers typically ignore a CLASS attribute that specifies multiple classes.

The CLASS attribute is particularly useful when combined with style sheets. For example, consider the following navigation bar:

<DIV CLASS=navbar> <A HREF="/">Home</A> | <A HREF="./">Index</A> | <A HREF="/search.html">Search</A> <A HREF="/"><IMG SRC="logo.gif" ALT="" TITLE="WDG Logo"></A> </DIV>

This example's use of the CLASS attribute allows style rules to easily be added. The following Cascading Style Sheet suggests a presentation for the preceding example:

.navbar {
  margin-top: 2em;
  padding-top: 1em;
  border-top: solid thin navy
}

.navbar IMG { float: right }

@media print {
  .navbar { display: none }
}

STYLE

The STYLE attribute allows authors to specify style rules inline for a single occurrence of an element. An example follows:

A popular font for on-screen reading is Verdana.

When the STYLE attribute is used, a default style sheet language must be specified for the document by setting the Content-Style-Type HTTP header to the media type of the style sheet language. The previous example could use the following META element in the document's HEAD:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Style-Type" CONTENT="text/css">

In most cases, use of the CLASS or ID attributes is a better choice than using STYLE since ID and CLASS can be selectively applied to different media and since they provide a separation of content and presentation that often simplifies maintenance.

TITLE

The TITLE attribute provides a title for an element and is commonly implemented as a "tooltip" on visual browsers, though many browsers lack support for TITLE. The attribute is most useful with A, LINK, IMG, and OBJECT elements, where it provides a title for the linked or embedded resource. Some examples follow:

<A HREF="mailto:liam@htmlhelp.com" TITLE="Feedback on HTML 4.0 Reference">liam@htmlhelp.com</A>
<A HREF="http://www-genome.wi.mit.edu/ftp/pub/software/WWW/cgi_docs.html" TITLE="CGI.pm - a Perl5 CGI Library">CGI.pm</A>
<LINK REL=Alternate HREF="index.fr.html" HREFLANG=fr LANG=fr TITLE="Version française">
<OBJECT CLASSID="java:Yahtzee.class" CODETYPE="application/java" WIDTH=400 HEIGHT=250 STANDBY="Ready to play Yahtzee?" TITLE="My Yahtzee Game"> <IMG SRC="yahtzee.gif" ALT="" TITLE="A Yahtzee animation"> Yahtzee is my favorite game! </OBJECT>

TITLE is also helpful with the ABBR and ACRONYM elements to provide the long form of the abbreviation. Examples:

He weighs 180 <ABBR TITLE=pounds>lbs.</ABBR>
<ABBR TITLE="Parti Québécois" LANG=fr-CA>PQ</ABBR>
<ACRONYM TITLE="North Atlantic Treaty Organization">NATO</ACRONYM>

Internationalization Attributes

LANG

The LANG attribute specifies the language of an element's attribute values and its content, including all contained elements that do not specify their own LANG attribute. While the LANG attribute is not widely supported, its use may help search engines index a document by its language while allowing speech synthesizers to use language-dependent pronunciation rules. As well, visual browsers can use the language's proper quotation marks when rendering the Q element.

The attribute value is case-insensitive, and should be specified according to RFC 1766; examples include en for English, en-US for American English, and ja for Japanese. Whitespace is not allowed in the language code.

Use of the LANG attribute also allows authors to easily change the style of text depending on the language. For example, a bilingual document may have one language in italics if rendered visually or a different voice if rendered aurally. The HTML of such a document might be as follows:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd">
<TITLE>Welcome - Bienvenue</TITLE>
<H1>
  <SPAN LANG=en>Welcome</SPAN> -
  <SPAN LANG=fr>Bienvenue</SPAN>
</H1>
<P LANG=en>This paragraph is in English.</P>
<P LANG=fr>Ce paragraphe est en français.</P>
...

A document's primary language may be set using the LANG attribute on the HTML element, or, alternatively, by using the Content-Language HTTP header.

DIR

The DIR attribute specifies the directionality of text--left-to-right (DIR=ltr, the default) or right-to-left (DIR=rtl). Characters in Unicode are assigned a directionality, left-to-right or right-to-left, to allow the text to be rendered properly. For example, while English characters are presented left-to-right, Hebrew characters are presented right-to-left.

Unicode defines a bidirectional algorithm that must be applied whenever a document contains right-to-left characters. While this algorithm usually gives the proper presentation, some situations leave directionally neutral text and require the DIR attribute to specify the base directionality.

Text is often directionally neutral when there are multiple embeddings of content with a different directionality. For example, an English sentence that contains a Hebrew phrase that contains an English quotation would require the DIR attribute to define the directionality of the Hebrew phrase. The Hebrew phrase, including the English quotation, should be contained within a SPAN element with DIR=rtl.

Scripting Events

A number of attributes that define client-side scripting events are common to most elements. The attribute value is a script--typically a function call or a few short statements--that is executed when the event occurs. The value may contain entities (e.g., ").

The following example features JavaScript code to handle two events of a submit button, giving the user a reminder in the status bar when the mouse moves over the button and clearing the status bar when the mouse moves away. Note that the attribute values are delimited by single quotes since double quotes are used within them.

<INPUT TYPE=submit ONMOUSEOVER='window.status="Did you fill in all required fields?";' ONMOUSEOUT='window.status="";'>

When an event attribute is used, a default scripting language must be specified for the document by setting the Content-Script-Type HTTP header to the media type of the scripting language. The previous example could use the following META element in the document's HEAD:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Script-Type" CONTENT="text/javascript">

The common event attributes are device-dependent and largely tailored for the graphical user interface. The available events are as follows:

ONCLICK, when the mouse button is clicked on an element;
ONDBLCLICK, when the mouse button is double-clicked on an element;
ONMOUSEDOWN, when the mouse button is pressed over an element;
ONMOUSEUP, when the mouse button is released over an element;
ONMOUSEOVER, when the mouse is moved onto an element;
ONMOUSEMOVE, when the mouse is moved while over an element;
ONMOUSEOUT, when the mouse is moved away from an element;
ONKEYPRESS, when a key is pressed and released over an element;
ONKEYDOWN, when a key is pressed down over an element;
ONKEYUP, when a key is released over an element.

LABEL - Form Field Label

Internationalization Attributes

More Information