Question

When take some tutorial from web, I see many people leaves tags open like <link ..>, <img ..>. But when I use Netbeans to edit them (the HTML/JSP pages), it show a red background on those tags until I add the slash into them. <br> –> <br/>.

Which is the correct way to write HTML-based code?

Answer 1

Both are fine for HTML. Though not for XHTML which is an XML dialect.

Some elements do not need a closing (/>) tag – in particular empty elements (those that do not have content). Examples are <hr> and <br>. These can also be self closing (<hr /> and <br />, respectively). This self closing is equivalent to having a close tag immediately after the open tag.

For XML, such a non closing tag is not valid – it must be closed, either self closing or have a closing tag. So <hr> is not valid XML, but <hr /> and <hr></hr> are.

HTML is not XML, but for better compatibility some tools try to emit as much XML like HTML as possible.