HTML Detail Summary element

5 March, 2021 — 3 minute read
permalink

Today we will be looking at a native HTML element that can be used to create expandable elements.

It's the detail-summary combination, and the result will look like this.

See the Pen abBYLrr by Chris Bongers (@rebelchris) on CodePen.

HTML Detail summary permalink

To add this functionality, we can enter a details element inside it will have a summary which will act as the title, and below that, a p that will be the collapsable content.

It will look like this:

<details>
  <summary>How old is Dragonball Z?</summary>
  <p>
    Dragon Ball Z is adapted from the final 324 chapters of the manga series which were
    published in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1988 to 1995. It premiered in Japan on Fuji
    Television on April 26, 1989
  </p>
</details>

You can have multiple details on one page, and they are even styleable!

details {
  width: 200px;
  margin-bottom: 1rem;
  border: 1px solid #efefef;
  padding: 0.5rem;
}
summary {
  color: #333;
  font-weight: bold;
}

And that's it we created a cool accordion-like element, with no JavaScript involved!

Browser support permalink

The cool part about the detail and summary combi is that it has pretty good support! It's just IE not playing along.

HTML detail summary browser support

Thank you for reading, and let's connect! permalink

Thank you for reading my blog. Feel free to subscribe to my email newsletter and connect on Facebook or Twitter