The Line Break element specifies that a new line must be started at the given point. The amount of line space used is dependant on the particular browser, but is generally the same as it would use when wrapping a paragraph of text over multiple lines.

Example of use:

<P>
Mary had a little lamb<BR>
It's fleece was white as snow<BR>
Everywhere that Mary went<BR>
She was followed by a little lamb.


With the addition of floating images (I.e. the ability to align an embedded image to the left or right of the browser display window) it became necessary to expand the <BR> element. Normal <BR> still just inserts a line break. A CLEAR attribute was added to <BR>, so :

CLEAR=left will break the line, and move vertically down until you have a clear left margin (I.e. where there are no floating images).
CLEAR=right does the same for the right margin.
CLEAR=all moves down until both margins are clear of images.

NOTE : The CLEAR attribute (as well as floating images) are currently only supported by Netscape and the Internet Explorer.

CLASS="Style Sheet class name"
The CLASS attribute is used to specify the <BR> element as using a particular style sheet class. For <BR> elements, style sheet settings such as line-height adjustments are useful. See the Style Sheets topic for details.

STYLE="In line style setting"
As well as using previously defined style sheet settings, the <BR> element can have in-line stylings attached to it. See the Style Sheets topic for details. For <BR> elements, style sheet settings such as line-height adjustments are useful.

ID="Unique element identifier"
The ID attribute can be used to either reference a unique style sheet identifier.

Every <BR> element in a document is an object that exposes certain properties and can be manipulated with certain methods. Note that scripting of the <BR> element/object is only supported by Internet Explorer 4.0 in its Dynamic HTML object model. Netscape does not support direct scripting of the <BR> element at all.

<BR...> Properties
Of the standard Dynamic HTML properties, the <BR...> element/object supports the following className, document, id, isTextEdit, lang, language, offsetHeight, offsetLeft, offsetParent, offsetTop, offsetWidth, outerHTML, outerText, parentElement, parentTextEdit, sourceIndex, style, tagName and title. Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML properties topics.
The <BR> element also supports the clear property that reflects the value of the CLEAR attribute (as described above).

<BR...> Methods
Of the standard Dynamic HTML methods, the <BR...> element/object supports the following contains, getAttribute, insertAdjacentHTML, insertAdjacentText, removeAttribute, scrollIntoView and setAttribute. Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML Methods topics.

<BR...> Events
The <BR...> element/object doesn't support any events.

© 1995-1998, Stephen Le Hunte