The fieldset element puts a box around other elements for grouping purposes. It makes your forms neater and easier to understand by organizing data into groups.

For example... a field labeled First may be somewhat ambiguous... but if it was inside a box titled Name one could then assume that First means First Name.

Name

First:
Last:

Although the fieldset was designed for forms... it can be used anywhere in a HTML Document. To outline a paragraph... for example.

The Fieldset Tag

Here I can write about that tag and everyone will know what tag I'm talking about because... it is the subject or title of the box I am writing in.

When content is contained in a box... with a subject or title ... one could assume everything in the box is talking about that subject!

We can even style the box!

However the title of the box doesn't come with it per se... You have to employ the legend tag to get that title up there.

The Legend tag

Second Legend Tag

• This element is a child of fieldset...
• It puts the name on the top of the box... i.e. a title...
• You can style it... what it looks like... where it goes...
• AND... you can have more than one although only the first one is on the line.

You could do something similar by styling another HTML tag... but... only fieldset has a legend.

In addition the HTML Global Attrbuties and Events, fieldset supports these attributes...

Name	Value	Description
disabled	none	Disables everything in the fieldset or group
form	id	The id of the form the fieldset belongs to
name	text	Name of the field set

Using fieldset and legend we can make our forms look organized and well presented...

that makes our forms easier to follow...

and that gets us a better quality of data!

Name First Last

Location City State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming