Webdigity Webmaster Forums - Optional Closing Tags in HTML

Zemfik

Wed 27 February 2008, 10:11 am GMT +0100

For as long as I've been validating web pages, I never realized that the closing </head> tag was optional in HTML. I feel as if I've missed the boat at times.

While I'm all for trimming excess code, I just cannot for the life of me strip out closing tags because they are optional in HTML. I'd be concerned that something, somewhere would not parse the document correctly if I removed the closing </head> element.

Are my concerns unfounded?

Nikolas

Wed 27 February 2008, 10:32 am GMT +0100

I've just validated an XHTML document without </head> and it is not passing validation. So I guess you are wrong about that. Closing the <head> tag is not optional :)

olaf

Wed 27 February 2008, 01:15 pm GMT +0100

I guess this browser called IE doesn't care about many tags :D
the only optional closing tag I know is </option> :)