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<time> tag in HTML

How does Firefox deal with the HTML <date> and <time> tags, especially <time> with datetime= attribute? Definitions of the tag say this about the datetime= attribute: "The datetime attribute of this element is used to translate the time into a machine-readable format so that browsers can offer to add date reminders through the user's calendar..." (ellipsis mine).

I don't see anything special happening with this tag when I open a web page that has them. There isn't anything done by Firefox that I can see, so I'm wondering if it just allows the tags but doesn't process them.

How does Firefox deal with the HTML <date> and <time> tags, especially <time> with datetime= attribute? Definitions of the tag say this about the datetime= attribute: "The datetime attribute of this element is used to translate the time into a machine-readable format so that browsers can offer to add date reminders through the user's calendar..." (ellipsis mine). I don't see anything special happening with this tag when I open a web page that has them. There isn't anything done by Firefox that I can see, so I'm wondering if it just allows the tags but doesn't process them.

All Replies (3)

I'm not sure there is meant to be any visible change.

https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/HTML/Element/time

So, basically <time> (and <data>) are there to _provide_ machine-readable forms of the item, but Firefox does nothing to provide that data as an <a> tag to a file, let's say an iCalendar (.ics) file would do, which is to offer to open the file in a calendar program. They exist to allow other programs processing the html to use that data.

Hi Tim, I didn't do any other research. Maybe if you follow the links in the article to the specification there might be more explanation or discussion about what they are intended to be used for.