Member Avatar for mbacon

Hello There,

I was wondering what the purpose of using <br /> and \n are, instead of just the normal HTML line break. Does this make my code more compatible with older browsers or different operating systems?

Thanks,
Mike

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Short answer: newline control characters (for example \n or \r\n) affect the source text and file handling, not how browsers render visible breaks. Visible breaks in rendered HTML are produced by markup or by CSS rules. This thread already touches on that— asked the original question, correctly noted that control characters organize source but are ignored in normal flow, and / discussed XHTML syntax—but a few practical points and modern best practices are useful to add.

Browsers collapse ordinary whitespace (spaces, tabs, linefeeds) into a single space in normal flow. To preserve line breaks visually, use semantic markup (paragraphs for blocks, appropriate tags for addresses/poems) or one of these approaches:

  • Use preformatted rendering (white-space: pre or white-space: pre-wrap) to keep newlines and spacing. See the white-space property documentation for behavior and browser support (MDN white-space).
  • Use a line-break element where a single break is required; HTML5 accepts the common forms and parsers are forgiving (WHATWG spec for br).

When taking plain text from files or users and showing it in HTML, handle two things: line endings and safety. Different systems use LF (\n) or CRLF (\r\n), editors or VCS can normalize them; normalize server-side if logic depends on exact line endings. Escape HTML entities first, then convert preserved newlines to visible breaks (many languages have utilities for this; for example see the PHP nl2br reference if using PHP (PHP nl2br)). Always escape user input before altering it to avoid injection.

Rule of thumb: prefer semantic block tags over repeated line-break elements; target HTML5 (modern parsers accept both syntaxes), use CSS white-space for preformatted text, normalize server-side line endings when processing text, and escape before converting newlines to visible breaks. This complements the points made by , , , and without repeating the exact examples already posted.

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Member Avatar for Member #46692

Isn't <br> the bog standard way to do a new line anyway in html?

Also, I don't think operating system has anything to do with it? Web browsers and the way they render html are independant of OS.

Member Avatar for trombonecrazy

<br/> is an xhtml version of the standard <br> tag but I have never seen </n>. The answer to the compatibility is no it won't make it anymore compatible only if you have got xhtml set in your doc type.

Member Avatar for mbacon

<br/> is an xhtml version of the standard <br> tag but I have never seen </n>. The answer to the compatibility is no it won't make it anymore compatible only if you have got xhtml set in your doc type.

Hey,

Sorry for not being specific enough about the \n... I was referring to the ASCII control character for a NewLine... \r would be Return Carriage and \t would be Tab... etc. etc..

What is the difference between the control character and the linebreak tag?

Member Avatar for MattEvans

The control character linebreaks \n or \r will be shown in your markup when you view it as plain text. They can be used to organise your code better.

When it's rendered as HTML, \n, \r linebreaks aren't shown atall. You have to use <br> or <br/> or <p></p> etc to show linebreaks in rendered HTML.

Member Avatar for mbacon

The control character linebreaks \n or \r will be shown in your markup when you view it as plain text. They can be used to organise your code better.

When it's rendered as HTML, \n, \r linebreaks aren't shown atall. You have to use <br> or <br/> or <p></p> etc to show linebreaks in rendered HTML.

Thank you :)

Member Avatar for MidiMagic

The correct form of the br tag is:

<br />

Note the space before the /. This makes the tag work (actually fail invisibly) on older browsers.

Single tags without closing tags or closing slashes are deprecated (a fancy word meaning they plan to discontinue it shortly).

So we either have to have tags in pairs:

<li>This is a list element.</li>

Or we have to show that the tag has no closing tag with a slash before the closing angle broket.

<hr />
<img src="toon.jpg alt="cartoon of clown with stuffed helicopter" />

I think they did this so they could write code checking software which is not ambiguous.

Member Avatar for MidiMagic

Not when you have superiors or clients demanding the "latest code".

And how long do you expect W3C to allow HTML to remain on the Internet? We are being forced to change to HDTV in two years. What makes you think that this will be any different?

Member Avatar for sreein1986

I think that tag is between script tag

please check once total code

Thanx,
sree

Member Avatar for peter_budo

I think that tag is between script tag

please check once total code

Thanx,
sree

I think the post is over year old. Don't yoy think it is either solved or poster long forgoten about and moved on?
If you have no valuable information to pass, please do not re-open old threads!

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