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HTML5 Doctor

Recently,

was formally added to the W3C HTML specification. Now that the dust has settled, it’s about time we dive in to find out where and when it’s appropriate to use
. Let’s get started.

History

The inclusion of a main element (or similar) has long been debated in the working groups with authors and others often questioning why we had new elements such as

,

, and

but no element to accurately describe the primary content of a page.

Steve Faulkner, an accessibility consultant and new doctor in residence, undertook the hard graft of carrying out research, gathering data and use cases, and speaking to implementers to get them interested. As Steve explains, he talked to:

as many implementers (both general browser implementers and accessibility implementers), developers, authors and users as I could and got advice and input from them. I went where the various people hung out; on IRC, mailing lists, twitter, blogs, conferences — anywhere. Steve Faulkner

This led to his writing an extension specification for

and a thorough use case rationale.

The proposal was accepted in November 2012, and

was then rolled into the HTML5.1 specification. Recently, it was added to the HTML5 specification following no objections. Lets have a look at how the spec describes
.

W3C Specification

You should still use the ARIA role until all browsers map the role to the

element.

The primary purpose of

is to map ARIA’s landmark role main to an element in HTML. This will help screen readers and other assistive technologies understand where the main content begins. The W3C spec describes
as representing:

The main content of the body of a document or application. The main content area consists of content that is directly related to or expands upon the central topic of a document or central functionality of an application. W3C HTML Editors Draft

Since the

element is now included in the HTML specification, the element has reverted to its HTML4 definition:

The body element represents the content of the document. W3C HTML Editors Draft

More Details

One important facet of

is that it can only be used once per page. Jeremy Keith wrote to the working group to understand why this is the case (rather than allowing multiple
s). Although I won’t go into detail, the discussion is an interesting read.

As per the spec, the W3C validator throws an error if you attempt to use multiple

elements per document.

Another stipulation of

is that it can’t be used as a descendant of an

,

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