HTMLElement Reference

Interfaces, Properties and Methods

The parser picks an interface for each tag (the prototype chain is drawn in The Interface Hierarchy). Valid custom element names get plain HTMLElement until defined (Defining Custom HTML Elements); unknown names get HTMLUnknownElement.

The interface the parser chooses for each tagJavaScript

for (const tag of ['input', 'video', 'user-card', 'blink']) {
  console.log(`<${tag}>`.padEnd(12), document.createElement(tag).constructor.name);
}

Output

<input>      HTMLInputElement
<video>      HTMLVideoElement
<user-card>  HTMLElement
<blink>      HTMLUnknownElement

Members every HTML element inherits from HTMLElement
Member of HTMLElement	What it does
hidden, inert	Hide the element; block focus and clicks inside it
dataset	data-user-id becomes dataset.userId
innerText	Text as rendered, honoring CSS and hidden content
focus(), blur(), click()	Move focus; simulate activation (Simulating Clicks)
showPopover(), togglePopover()	Control a popover element (Popover and Dialog in JS)

innerText can force a reflow (Reflow, Repaint and Batching), so prefer textContent. inert is Baseline widely available since April 2023. Most properties reflect an attribute; value is the exception, holding the live value while defaultValue maps to the attribute.

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