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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T05:56:55+00:00

How well do the new layout tags in HTML5 degrade? What are the hazards

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How well do the new layout tags in HTML5 degrade? What are the hazards in using them? (I’m not talking about <video>–I’ve seen specific fallback code for it).

Specifically, in the case of something like 

<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<header>
<h1>Talking Dogs</h1>
<b><p>Humans aren't the only talkers!</p></b>
</header>
<article>
<p>Ever encountered a talking dog? I have.</p>
<p>It all happened one day as I was walking down the street...</p>
</article>
<footer>
© 2009 Woofer Dog Corporation
</footer>
</body>
</html>

Would using <header>, <article>, or <footer> cause any browser problems? Do they degrade to <div> in unsupporting browsers automatically? Or if I include them, should I only include them for semantic meaning, and not for CSS styling or DOM scripting?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    As long as you use html5shiv to handle IE, it will work fine.

    The browser will treat all unknown tags (including HTML5 tags) as normal inline elements.
    You should include the following CSS rule:

    article, aside, figure, footer, header, hgroup,
menu, nav, section { display: block; }
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