HTML Concepts: Form Owners

Published on December 18, 2021, filed under Web Development (RSS feed for all categories).

Today in “HTML Concepts”: form owners. It’s not what you are when you put a form on a page.

What are form owners? In essence, form elements that so-called form-associated elements are tied to.

Form-associated elements are the following:

button, fieldset, input, object, output, select, textarea, img, as well as form-associated custom elements.

(These fall into certain categories, namely listed, submittable, resettable, and autocapitalize-inheriting elements.)

Form ownership is straightforward, as the connection of a form-associated element with a form owner is simple:

The element is associated with its nearest ancestor form element—unless it is a form-associated listed element (anything not img) and has a form attribute that overrides this association. (One can construct scenarios in which neither is the case.)

In many cases one can say that each form element has a form owner, its parent form element. (And you, if you own a web form, can still call yourself a form owner, too.)

About Me

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for companies like Google and as an engineering manager for companies like Miro, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

With my current move to Spain, I’m open to a new remote frontend leadership position. Feel free to review and refer my CV or LinkedIn profile.

I love trying things, not only in web development, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.