Span and Div Tags

Span and Div are container tags that define parts of your document. They are great for applying styles to a section of text. They are also helpful for dividing your document into parts such as header, body and footer.

• The <span> tag is used to group inline-elements in a document.
• The <span> tag provides no visual change by itself.

• The <span> tag provides a way to control the style of part of your document.

• The <div> tag defines a section of an HTML document.

• The <div> tag is used to group elements to format them with CSS.
• You can make a <span> or <div> point to a style sheet using the id or class attribute.
• The id must be unique. There can only be one element with that particular id.
• The class attribute can apply to in different elements.

<span style="color:ff0000">This text is red</span> this text isn't red.
<div style="color:#0000ff">
  <h3>This is a heading</h3>
  <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</div>

Attributes

The <span> and <div> tags have no required attributes but the most common attributes used are:

• style - specifies a style that applies to all content and elements up to the end tag
• class - specifies a CSS classs that applies to all content and elements up to the end tag
• id - identifies the tag so you can select it with jQuery or JavaScript

In general, use id whenever you want to refer to a specific element and class when you have a number of things that are alike.