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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-20T08:44:38+00:00

I understand that in order to instruct the browser how to handle HTML page

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I understand that in order to instruct the browser how to handle HTML page I need to specify a DOCTYPE… For a page that i built with HTML5 I used the following:

<!DOCTYPE html>

When i am viewing other sites that are using the same DOCTYPE, there is an additional definition inside the <html> tag, such as:

<html dir="ltr" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

What does the xml namespace do that it is needed inside the HTML tag in addition to the DOCTYPE definition?

Thanks!

Joel

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If the xmlns attribute is set, it’s a XHTML (XHTML5) document.

    This indicates a HTML5 document:

    HTTP-Header Content-Type: text/html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

    And this indicates a XHTML5 document:

    HTTP-Header Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

    If the webpage is using XHTML5 an does not have the xmlns attribute, it wont be displayed properly (Firefox would display the XML-DOM instead of the page).

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