<div>: The Content Division element
Baseline Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The <div>
HTML element is the generic container for flow content. It has no effect on the content or layout until styled in some way using CSS (e.g. styling is directly applied to it, or some kind of layout model like Flexbox is applied to its parent element).
Try it
Attributes
This element includes the global attributes.
Note: The align
attribute is obsolete; do not use it anymore. Instead, you should use CSS properties or techniques such as CSS Grid or CSS Flexbox to align and position <div>
elements on the page.
Usage notes
Accessibility
The <div>
element has an implicit role of generic
, and not none. This may affect certain ARIA combination declarations that expect a direct descendant element with a certain role to function properly.
Examples
A simple example
<div>
<p>
Any kind of content here. Such as <p>, <table>. You name it!
</p>
</div>
Result
A styled example
This example creates a shadowed box by applying a style to the <div>
using CSS. Note the use of the class
attribute on the <div>
to apply the style named "shadowbox"
to the element.
HTML
<div class="shadowbox">
<p>Here's a very interesting note displayed in a lovely shadowed box.</p>
</div>
CSS
.shadowbox {
width: 15em;
border: 1px solid #333;
box-shadow: 8px 8px 5px #444;
padding: 8px 12px;
background-image: linear-gradient(180deg, #fff, #ddd 40%, #ccc);
}
Result
Technical summary
Content categories | Flow content, palpable content. |
---|---|
Permitted content |
Flow content. Or (in WHATWG HTML): If the parent is a <dl> element: one or more
<dt> elements followed by one or more
<dd> elements, optionally intermixed with
<script> and
<template> elements.
|
Tag omission | None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory. |
Permitted parents |
Any element that accepts
flow content. Or (in WHATWG HTML): <dl> element.
|
Implicit ARIA role | generic |
Permitted ARIA roles | Any |
DOM interface | HTMLDivElement |
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML Standard # the-div-element |
Browser compatibility
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