| Depr. | Version |
|---|---|
| No | HTML 4 |
| IE5.5+ | FF1+ | SA1.3+ | OP9.2+ | CH2+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial |
Syntax
Description
The
datetime attribute contains the time stamp that
reflects the time and date at which the change was made to the content
using the ins or del elements. This
attribute must be formatted precisely, right down to the minute and
second.
Example
The datetime
attribute is used in both the del and
ins elements below:
<p>Bernie enjoyed nothing more than a <del
cite="http://berniesworld.com/drag.html"
datetime="2007-11-05T23:31:05Z">night out on the town at his
favorite drag queen show</del> <ins
cite="http://berniesworld.com/drag.html"
datetime="2007-11-05T23:33:32Z">quiet night in with a warm cup of
cocoa</ins></p>
Value
The datetime
attribute is defined as follows (using the ISO8601 date
format):
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD
Here’s what the various components mean:
- YYYY: year (e.g. 2007)
- MM: month (e.g. 11 for November)
- DD: day of the month (e.g. 05)
- T: required character, a separator
- hh: hour (e.g. 23 for 11.00pm)
- mm: minutes (e.g. 31)
- ss: seconds (e.g. 05)
- TZD: Time Zone Designator (Z, which appears in the example HTML above, denotes Zulu, better known as Greenwich Mean Time.)
Compatibility
| Internet Explorer | Firefox | Safari | Opera | Chrome | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5.5 | 6.0 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.5 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 3.1 | 4.0 | 9.2 | 9.5 | 10.0 | 2.0 |
| Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial |
None of the browsers
we tested do anything visual with the datetime
attribute, but the information is available in the DOM for the purposes of
scripting or styling with CSS. Given the nature of how different
industries might want to handle/render the way that document changes are
indicated to the user, a legal firm’s requirements for rendering a change
that has an associated citation included in the markup may differ greatly
from that, say, of a leisure center’s health and safety team. How they
appear could be radically changed to suit these needs, but by default the
browser does not include the information contained in the
datetime attribute on screen to the user.
The compatibility chart is set to partial, because the information is there for the taking but the browser does not give any hint that there is date and time information available regarding this inserted text, only that there has been an insertion (with the italic font).
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