What is the correct value for the disabled attribu

Question

What is the correct value for the disabled attribute for a textbox or textarea?

I've seen the following used before:

<input type="text" disabled />
<input type="text" disabled="disabled" />
<input type="text" disabled="true" />

Answer 1

In HTML5, there is no correct value, all the major browsers do not really care what the attribute is, they are just checking if the attribute exists so the element is disabled.

Answer 2

I just tried all of these, and for IE11, the only thing that seems to work is disabled="true". Values of disabled or no value given didnt work. As a matter of fact, the jsp got an error that equal is required for all fields, so I had to specify disabled="true" for this to work.

Answer 3

• For XHTML, <input type="text" disabled="disabled" /> is the valid markup.
• For HTML5, <input type="text" disabled /> is valid and used by W3C on their samples.
• In fact, both ways works on all major browsers.

Answer 4

HTML5 spec:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#enabling-and-disabling-form-controls:-the-disabled-attribute :

The checked content attribute is a boolean attribute

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/infrastructure.html#boolean-attributes :

The presence of a boolean attribute on an element represents the true value, and the absence of the attribute represents the false value.

If the attribute is present, its value must either be the empty string or a value that is an ASCII case-insensitive match for the attribute's canonical name, with no leading or trailing whitespace.

Conclusion:

The following are valid, equivalent and true:

<input type="text" disabled />
<input type="text" disabled="" />
<input type="text" disabled="disabled" />
<input type="text" disabled="DiSaBlEd" />

The following are invalid:

<input type="text" disabled="0" />
<input type="text" disabled="1" />
<input type="text" disabled="false" />
<input type="text" disabled="true" />

The absence of the attribute is the only valid syntax for false:

<input type="text" />

Recommendation

If you care about writing valid XHTML, use disabled="disabled", since <input disabled> is invalid and other alternatives are less readable. Else, just use <input disabled> as it is shorter.