<param> (Object Parameter)

This element specifies a parameter to be passed to an embedded object that is specified with the object or applet elements. This element should occur only within the scope of one of these elements.

Standard Syntax

Attributes Defined by Internet Explorer

datafld="column name"(4)
dataformatas="html | text"(4)
datasrc="data source id"(4)

Element Specific Attributes

datafld

This Internet Explorer–specific attribute is used to indicate the column name in the data source that is bound to the <param> tag's value.

dataformatas

This Internet Explorer–specific attribute indicates whether the bound data is plain text (text) or HTML (html).

datasrc

The value of this attribute is set to an identifier indicating the data source to pull data from. Bound data is used to set the value of the parameters passed to the object or applet with which this <param> tag is associated.

name

This attribute contains the parameter's name. The name of the parameter depends on the particular object being inserted into the page, and it is assumed that the object knows how to handle the passed data. Do not confuse the name attribute for this element with the name attribute used for form elements. In the latter case, the name attribute does not have a similar meaning to id, but rather specifies the name of the data to be passed to an enclosing <object> tag.

type

When the valuetype attribute is set to ref, the type attribute can be used to indicate the type of the information to be retrieved. Legal values for this attribute are in the form of MIME types, such as text/html.

value

This attribute contains the parameter's value. The actual content of this attribute depends on the object and the particular parameter being passed in, as determined by the name attribute.

valuetype

This attribute specifies the type of the value attribute being passed in. Possible values for this attribute include data, object, and ref. A value of data specifies that the information passed in through the value parameter should be treated just as data. A value of ref indicates that the information being passed in is a URL that indicates where the data to be used is located. The information is not retrieved, but the URL is passed to the object, which then can retrieve the information if necessary. The last value of object indicates that the value being passed in is the name of an object as set by its id attribute. In practice, the data attribute is used by default.

Examples

<applet code="plot.class">
<param name="min" value="5">
<param name="max" value="30">
<param name="ticks" value=".5">
<param name="line-style" value="dotted">
</applet>

<object
 classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
 codebase="swflash.cab#version=
     2,0,0,0"
 height="100" width="100">
<param id="param1" name="Movie" value="SplashLogo.swf">
<param id="param2" name="Play" value="True">
</object>

Compatibility

HTML 3.2, 4, 4.01
XHTML 1.0, 1.1, Basic
Internet Explorer 3, 4, 5, 6
Netscape 2, 3, 4, 4.5-4.8, 6, 7

Notes

The HTML 3.2 specification supports only the name and value attributes for this element.

Under XHTML 1.0, empty elements such as <param> require a trailing forward slash: <param> /.