Revision 1045938 of <isindex>

<div>{{Deprecated_header}}</div>

<h2 id="Summary">Summary</h2>

<p><span class="seoSummary"><strong><code>&lt;isindex&gt;</code></strong> is an obsolete HTML element that puts a text field in a page for querying the document.</span> <code>&lt;isindex&gt;</code> was providing a single line text input for entering a query string. When sent, the server would return a list of pages matching the query. It supports depended on both the browser and the server to react to the query.</p>

<p><code>&lt;isindex&gt;</code> is deprecated as of HTML 4.01, because the same behaviour can be achieved with an HTML form.</p>

<h2 id="Attributes">Attributes</h2>

<p>Like all other HTML elements, this element accepts the <a href="/en-US/docs/HTML/Global_attributes">global attributes</a>.</p>

<dl>
 <dt>{{htmlattrdef("prompt")}}</dt>
 <dd>This attribute adds its value as a prompt for text field.</dd>
 <dt>{{htmlattrdef("action")}}</dt>
 <dd>This attribute can be used to send the query to a different URL. Action is not defined by W3C.</dd>
</dl>

<h2 id="Example">Example</h2>

<pre class="brush: html">
&lt;head&gt;
  &lt;isindex prompt="Search Document... " /&gt;
&lt;/head&gt;</pre>

== History ==

On June 1992, Dan Connolly would [https://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1992/0080.html prefer] a different [[HTML/Elements/a|anchor]] type instead of isindex.

On November 1992, [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/thread.html#31 indexes as links rather than documents] started by Dan Connolly who is pushing the idea that indexes are more links than documents. In this thread, different type of solutions are proposed. The question of forms for making queries is [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/0039.html mentioned] in reference to Dynatext browser: "The browser displays toggle buttons, text
fields etc. The user fills in the fields, clicks OK, and the
query results come up in the table of contents window."

A thread about [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/thread.html#42 isindex] in November 1992, Kevin Hoadley [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/0042.html questioned]  the need for an isindex element and proposed to drop it. He proposed to have instead an [[HTML/Elements/input|input]] element (idea [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/0053.html supported] by Steve Putz). Tim Berners-Lee [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/0044.html explains] the purpose of isindex resulting in aggregated search results. Kevin [https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992NovDec/0048.html replies] that he doesn't like the boolean nature of isindex and would prefer a system where everything is searchable and proposes to extend the current WWW Framework with a specific httpd configuration and defined that some URIs mapping create search queries.

In 2016, it has been proposed to [https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/240 remove <code>isindex</code> from the specification].

== HTML Reference ==

* [https://www.w3.org/TR/html5 HTML5] classifies it as a [https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/obsolete.html#obsolete non-conforming feature].
* [https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.8 ISINDEX] element deprecated in [https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/ HTML 4.01]
* [https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#isindex ISINDEX] in [https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32 HTML 3.2]
* [https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_5.html#SEC5.2.3 ISINDEX] in [https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_5.html HTML 2.0] as well the description of the behavior in [https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_7.html#SEC7.5 Queries and Indexes] (HTML 2.0)
* [https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/HTMLPlus/htmlplus_51.html ISINDEX] in [https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/HTMLPlus/htmlplus_1.html HTML+]

<h2 id="See_also">See also</h2>

<ul>
 <li>{{HTMLElement("input")}}</li>
 <li>{{HTMLElement("form")}}</li>
</ul>

<p>{{HTMLRef}}</p>