[solved] What's with the <figure> element?

I saw someone use…

<figure>
     <img ........>
</figure>

…for a project. Do I need or should I use if I’m placing an image on a page?
What’s the standard parctice when we use ?

tx guy’s

1 Like

A figure is just a container for media of some kind, normally with a caption (the <figcaption> element). Like a <nav> element has navigation, or a <header> has header content, or <main> has the main webpage content. Could be image/s, video/s, audio, text, graphics, whatever.

It’s not necessary, it’s just for better structuring of pages. For example, you normally put an alt attribute on an image that describes the image. If it’s in a figure, you can put the description in the caption instead, and a screenreader or whatever will understand that.

It’s a figure as in a figure in a book, literally the same.

1 Like

It’s just semantic naming… like

<header>
<footer>

As opposed to just calling them

<div>
<div>

or before that in the stone age days.

<table>
<table>

Other semantic elements are

<article>
<aside>
<details>
<section>
<summary>

etc…

1 Like

Oh I get it… that’s cool and I’ll use that. I definitely want my pages to be legit.
tx man.
can you help out with my other posts this morning too :slight_smile: lol

it’s called Semantic naming. Like it’s a thing and thats what the thing is called.
Got it! Stone Age lol