Is there a way to create your own HTML element?

Question

Is there a way to create your own HTML element? I want to make a specially designed check box.

I imagine such a thing would be done in JavaScript. Something akin to document.createHTMLElement but the ability to design your own element (and tag).

Answer 1

No, there isn't.

The HTML elements are limited to what the browser will handle. That is to say, if you created a custom firefox plugin, and then had it handle your special tag, then you "could" do it, for varying interpretations of "doing it". A list of all elements for a particular version of HTML may be found here: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/elements.html

Probably, however, you don't actually want to. If you want to "combine" several existing elements in such a way as they operate together, then you can do that very JavaScript. For example, if you'd like a checkbox to, when clicked, show a dropdown list somewhere, populated with various things, you may do that.

Perhaps you may like to elaborate on what you actually want to achieve, and we can help further.

Answer 2

Yes, you can create your own tags. You have to create a Schema and import it on your page, and write a JavaScript layer to convert your new tags into existing HTML tags.

An example is fbml (Facebook Markup Language), which includes a schema and a JavaScript layer that Facebook wrote. See this: Open Graph protocol.

Using it you can make a like button really easily:

<fb:like href="http://developers.facebook.com/" width="450" height="80"/>