Deprecated and Valid Elements

Abstract

HTML 4 is backwards compatible with HTML 2, 3.2 and 4.0 and unless elements have been specifically deprecated in XHTML you can still use them safely. Some formatting elements such as big although not specifically deprecated are no longer the preferred way of formatting text — style sheets should be used instead. If you are writing documents which will be viewed with recent versions of the browser all formatting should be done with style sheets.