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From: Barry Margolin <bar...@alum.mit.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html
Subject: Re: Is </OPTION> optional?
Date: Wed, 02 May 2012 11:53:41 -0400
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In article <j6k2q79ihed6srqhqvkp4c7copob4lm...@4ax.com>,
 Swifty <steve.j.sw...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I can't remember where I learned HTML, but I remember that there is no
> </OPTION> tag in HTML (but browsers don't care if you have them)
> 
> I've discovered that I sometimes get blank entries in my <SELECT>
> controls, even though none of the <OPTION>'s are blank. This happens
> with the current Opera browser (and back quite a few releases).
> 
> The workaround is to add the un-necessary, and possible illegal
> </OPTION> tags.
> 
> Presumably this is a problem that I should report to Opera, but I
> thought I'd check my facts first.

You've got it backwards. </OPTION> is legal, but optional in some 
contexts.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syntax.html#syntax-tag-omission

says:

An option element's end tag may be omitted if the option element is 
immediately followed by another option element, or if it is immediately 
followed by an optgroup element, or if there is no more content in the 
parent element.

-- 
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***