The Angle Bracket

Round 1 exits

As you'd expect from a completely randomized tag set, there were some real surprises in this round, but there are also a lot of tags of dubious value and they mostly exited in round 1. I've grouped the results into the categories defined for each tag in the spec.

Because there are so many tags in round 1, per-tag commentary is hidden; you can click or tap any tag to see it.

Block tags: 50% eliminated

Some old favorites drew tough games and were eliminated early; dt was robbed, robbed I say.

• dt & dd

  Originally Definition List, dl is now technically a Description List. But what it really is is a key-value map in HTML! It's cruelly under-used and I'm sad to see it go.

• figure and figcaption

  Used to show some vaguely-defined content that might need a caption to explain what it is. Very niche. Nobody's sad about these.

• hr

  Originally meant Horizontal Rule, but since that's not even slightly semantic it now means thematic break which is a phrase that I suppose has an h and an r in it somewhere.

• ol

  A really tough break to be put up against header and table in game 12. ul was much luckier and dominated game 21.

• pre

  A cruel rejection of a faithful workhorse. pre isn't semantic but it's useful, dammit.

Embeds: 70% eliminated

It was a brutal first round for embeds of all kinds; they were the second most-eliminated category of tags.

• embed

  embed is how Netscape brought in content that was delivered by plug-ins. Nobody uses Netscape anymore, but more surprising is that the entire concept of plugins has essentially vanished. The final holdout, Flash, was end of lifed in January 2021.

• iframe

  This was a shocking result given iframe's ubiquity across the web, losing to head and main in game 5. head is obviously a strong tag, but main? Despite its ubiquity, devs don't love iframe.

• object & param

  object works like embed except it wasn't written in a hurry in the middle of the night by an overcaffeinated nerd at Netscape. It is similarly unhelpful in the modern, mostly plugin-free web, although people do use it to embed PDFs.

• video, source & track

  The Netflix tags! They include a passing glance at accessibility in the track tag which is routinely ignored.

Forms: 42% eliminated

In a pattern we're going to see repeated several times, all the newer, accessibility-minded stuff got kicked out early. You bastards.

• datalist

  A select with built-in autocomplete! This is so good! But it was up against meta and blockquote in game 15, tough to beat.

• meter

  It... shows a little gauge. Honestly, not crying any tears about losing this mysterious little tag.

• optgroup

  Who is grouping options in dropdowns? Nobody, that's who.

• output

  This is supposed to make sections of your page that change as a result of user input more accessible by making them aria-live but there are some questions as to how useful that really is.

• progress

  It's like meter but it's expected to move and... why do we have this?

• textarea

  How DARE you. One of the foundational tags of web apps, cruelly discarded. But it was up against p and html in game 11 so it had no chance.

Metadata: 30% eliminated

With only a third of the tags in this category eliminated, it was one of the strongest early categories, although it included early warning signs for CSS fans.

• base

  Yeah, okay, it's useful to be able to set the base href, but we can all agree it's pretty niche.

• link

  A highly controversial result in game 1, round 1! nav and section, semantic but hardly fundamental, beat link, the core tag for (amongst other things) pulling in CSS. As we're going to see, CSS had a rough time in this tournament.

Scripting: 40% eliminated

There aren't a lot of scripting tags to begin with, and it turns out only one we really care about.

• slot & template

  Powerful as they are, not a lot of people are authoring web components right now, so it was unsurprising to see these exit early.

Sections: 20% eliminated

This was the strongest category in round 1, with passionate fans and a bunch of surprisingly close games.

• article

  Highly useful in a semantic sense but also confusingly similar to section in practice, article also drew a brutal first game against a and img, and there's no coming back from that.

• h3 & h4

  In real usage data h3 and h4 are far more popular than h5 and h6, which both survived to round 2, so I'm going to say they were unlucky victims of the entirely random seeding of the first round.

Tables: 66% eliminated

I feel like maybe the backlash against table layouts was learned too well; tables are nifty data structures and it was cruel to eviscerate the category in round 1.

• col & colgroup

  I'll be honest, I didn't know these tags existed until I read the spec. They're certainly nifty semantically, and to make styling columns possible, but they're hardly core to the table experience. They don't even hold data!

• tfoot & thead

  Be honest, when was the last time you defined a footer for a table? Headers are a lot more useful but, still, hardly essential.

• td & tr

  Unlike the other four eliminated in this round, these are the very core of the table experience! Game 23 was controversial, with li and pre beating the arguably more useful td (and even more surprisingly, span). tr's loss in game 23 made more sense as it was up against heavyweights script and title.

Text: 73% eliminated

The most-eliminated tag category, round 1 saw the immediate exit of a huge number of marginally useful semantic tags, and also some big surprises.

• bdi & bdo

  Unless you regularly develop for languages that read right-to-left, you probably haven't used these tags. Internationalization was an early victim of the winnowing process of the tournament.

• data

  The purest of purely semantic tags, it's no surprise to see this exit early.

• dfn

  Essentially an inline equivalent of dt, a very niche tag.

• i

  Originally for italics, i is one of several early non-semantic tags that have been retconned into a different mean. It's now Idiomatic text, which we can all agree is some bullshit.

• kbd

  The distinction between kbd and code is pretty fine, so no wonder this exited early.

• mark

  Who uses this, other than search engines? Do they even use it?

• q

  The non-block equivalent of blockquote; apparently browsers enclose the text in quotes? Neat. Not very useful.

• ruby, rp & rt

  Another victim of our manifest lack of concern for internationalization, all three of the ruby tags exited in round 1. rp takes my prize for being the most hacky solution to a markup problem I've ever seen, existing solely to hide the parentheses you need to include for your text to make sense in browsers that don't understand the ruby tag. rt holds the distinction of having the fewest votes of any tag in round 1, being absolutely crushed by ul in game 21.

• s

  The strikethrough element is not really a semantic tag, but it's so useful that it has survived many generations of HTML. Hoever, not useful enough to save it in game 22 against em and dl

• samp

  I understand why samp and output are different but I am not sure how many authors are really going to care enough to think about that.

• small

  Absolutely not a semantic tag, it nevertheless remains useful to be able to define "small print" as actually being small, so this tag has survived in the spec. But not in the tournament.

• sub & sup

  Venerable survivors of HTML's academic origins, superscript and subscript aren't really semantic but they're useful as hell. Both drew tough opponents in round 1: sub lost to select and summary, sup to script and title. No dishonor in defeat to such opponents.

• u

  Previously the underline element, an entirely non-semantic but ancient tag, u is now technically the Unarticulated Annotation element which, surprise, usually renders as an underline without upsetting semantic purists.

• var

  An obscure tag with academic origins, nearly useless except to mathematicians, var scored the second lowest of any tag in round one. Only the deeply unloved rt scored lower.

Random other tags

• del & ins

  Who the fuck is using these anyway, Google Docs?

• summary

  Although summary didn't make it, its (still useful) parent details survived! A lovely little combo, you are reading content in a summary/details element pair right this second. It was also a close game: summary lost to option by just 0.1%.

• map

  The oldest of old school, the image map, cruelly cut down. Its child area survived, but mostly as a result of being in an extremely weak game 14.

Round 2 exits

Interesting that related tags often leave in the same round -- dt and dd, the ruby trio, sub and sup, del and ins went in round 1, but fieldset and legend both made it to round 2 and then got eliminated at the same time, as did all the h* tags, and em and strong.

Block: 50% eliminated

• blockquote

  An oldie and a goodie, blockquote was up against style and head in game 3 and there's no shame losing to those heavyweights.

• dl

  Since dt and dd were eliminated in round 1, the writing was on the wall for dl, but I was glad to see people appreciated its value enough to get past round 1. It lost game 7 to script and marquee, both of whom went very far indeed.

• main

  Look, nobody gives a shit about main. I have no idea how it managed to beat iframe in round 1.

• menu

  A cute little semantic tag, menu was never going to be a finalist, and it drew ul and table in game 11.

Embeds: 66% eliminated

It was another tough round for the unloved embed category.

• audio

  Where would podcasts be without the stalwart audio tag? We're going to find out, because we just got rid of it.

• picture

  Complex but powerful, picture lets you load images that look good on any device at the cost of a great deal of tedious markup. Your favorite framework's image-optimization feature probably uses this tag, but actual humans are probably just using img.

Forms: 25% eliminated

After a tough round 1, the remaining tags in the Forms category were pretty strong in round 2.

• fieldset & legend

  Clever but only occasionally useful, if your form is so complicated that you need fieldset, you're probably doing something wrong. With it goes legend, which even people who use fieldset seldom use.

Scripting: 33% eliminated

Given that the only tag eliminated in the scripting category was noscript, I think it's arguable to say that no actual scripting tags were eliminated, presaging the strength of web app voters in later rounds.

• noscript

  No chance.

Sections: 58% eliminated

Almost no section tags got eliminated in round 1, but round 2 was a real winnower for this category.

• address

  Honestly kind of weird that the spec considers this a section rather than a block or a text element, but what do I know? Confidently semantic, address was too pure for this world.

• aside

  A delightfully semantic tag, game 12 had it up against span and title and that's a tough game.

• h1, h2, h5, h6 and hgroup

  h3 and h4 were unlucky in round 1 but round 2 decided none of the header tags were essential, not even h1, which lost to div (obviously) and section (surprisingly) in game 5.

Tables: 66% eliminated

Round 2 saw the exits of table's remaining child tags, leaving it non-functional but a symbolic standard-bearer for at least one more round.

• tbody

  If nobody's using thead and tfoot, nobody's using tbody. It only survived because game 7 in round 1 was a very weak match.

• th

  With th eliminated, table was the last tag standing in the category.

Text: 78% eliminated

Text tags were once again the weakest category in round 2, with nearly 4 in 5 tags kicked out this round.

• abbr

  Old, solidly semantic but ultimately somewhat unloved, we say goodbye to abbr.

• b

  Like i and u, the tag formerly known as Bold has been retroactively given a new name and a semantic purpose, it is now the comically try-hard Bring Attention To element which, very luckily, means it renders as bold in most browsers. It lost game 11 to ul and table, which seems fair.

• br

  The line break element is still called the line break element, unlike similar older tags which have been renamed. A convenient, get-it-done tool in any developer's toolset, it lost game 9 to button and label, a sign of things to come.

• cite

  A throwback to the early academic origins of HTML, when Tim expected most people would be writing scientific papers and would need to cite each other all the time, this tag still gets a lot of use because people really do cite papers online all the time, in addition to everything else we now use the web for.

• em & strong

  The semantic replacements for i and b that never fully replaced either, nobody's too broken up about seeing these go.

• time

  An adorable, pure-hearted little semantic tag, it was up against select and header in game 13, so it was time to go.

Randos

• details

  If you've looked at the markup of this site you'll know I'm a big fan of details, but sadly the public was not swayed.

• dialog

  A stylable equivalent to the much-maligned JavaScript alert() box, dialog is not supported in the current version of Firefox and Safari is still working on it. I imagine there's an entertaining debate going on inside Mozilla about why they shouldn't support making modals.

• area

  area only survived to round 2 by drawing extremely weak opponents in round 1, and with map already eliminated there was no chance for it.

Round 3 exits

Only 12 tags exited in round 3, so I'm not comparing by category any more, we'll go tag by tag.

• li & ul

  They made it to round 3, but lists are gone. In this new pared-down HTML you're gonna have to add bullets to divs.

• label

  Accessibility breathes its last as the final tag that attempts to help non-visual browsers falls in game 2 to img and html.

• select & option

  You want a drop-down menu? Fuck you. Build it in JavaScript.

• head, title & meta

  All the remaining meta tags fell out in the same round, each in different games. This version of HTML is not for search engines either.

• header & footer

  Continuing the pattern of paired elements exiting simultaneously, these semantic stalwarts exited in games 6 and 7.

• section

  It outlasted many of its confusingly-similar peers, but no more sections for you. Only divs!

• code

  The second-to-last semantic tag is out of the tournament, losing to body and script in game 4, but code is the MVP of this particular website; every single tag is a code tag.

Round 4 exits

• p

  p barely counts as a semantic tag but it was still too semantic for the brutal, bare-bones HTML of round 5, so away it goes.

• form

  form losing to input makes it impossible to submit a form using HTML, but still lets you build forms in JavaScript, like in React, and the preferences of JavaScripters are definitely making themselves felt now.

• style

  Another tragedy. Now if you want to style stuff you're going to have to do it using style attributes. Not coincidentally, adding style via attributes is another React idiom.

• html

  How dare you. As everyone points out, the html tag is superfluous, because it's always implied if you leave it out. But still! It's the spiritual root of the whole thing!

• body

  With html already gone, it was clear body, another implied tag, wasn't going to make it through this round.

• nav

  The very last semantic tag is gone. It's just pure functionality now.

• table

  Long rendered useless by the absence of all its child tags, table takes its final bow.

• span

  Not only did span lose to div, it came dead last in game 1. An ignominous fate.

Round 5 exits

• img

  The grand-daddy of the commercial web, the image tag, has been cruelly dispatched. Sure, you can bring in images using style attributes on a div, but where's the dignity?

• button & input

  The final form elements bite the dust. Good luck capturing any user input, motherfuckers.

• canvas

  The powerful, flexible canvas, its own weird universe of APIs, has a ton of fans, as evidenced by it sticking it out all the way until now. But it didn't make the final 4.

Final 4 exits

• div

  The mighty have fallen! A lot of people were worried (or gleeful) that div was gonna take the whole tournament, but it was not to be, primarily because of the by-now unstoppable force of meme voters piling on to marquee, especially Danielle Leong

• script

  You'd think the ejection of script would mean the end of JavaScript shenanigans, but Alex's all-marquee rocket ship disproves that.