MediaDesc Attribute Type

The MediaDesc Attribute Type is a data type defined by XHTML Modularisation 1.1, declared in the DTD as XML 1.0 type CDATA.
Reference: *W3C - XHTML Modularisation 1.1 - Attribute Types

Specific Attributes with Type MediaDesc

1. media:
   This is declared on the elements: link, style

Common Attributes with Type MediaDesc

There are no Common Attributes with type MediaDesc.

Attribute Value for Type MediaDesc

A comma-separated list of one or more recognised media descriptors, e.g. "all", "screen", "screen, print"

The MediaDesc Attribute Type is used for specifying the media types for which the resource is applicable, e.g. for the style element the media attribute (of type MediaDesc) indicates the media types for which the relevant styles apply.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="printstyle.css" />
  
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
    body { color:#000; background:#fff url(bg.jpg) top left no-repeat }
</style>

The first example indicates that the style sheet "printstyle.css" is for printed pages only, whereas the second implies that the rules within the style element should be used for display on computer screens only.

Valid media descriptors

The following list of recognised media descriptors is adapted from the entry for MediaDesc under the W3C's *XHTML 1.1 Modularisation - Attribute Types, whilst also taking into account the *CSS 2.1 list of Recognised Media Types.

all

To be used for all devices

screen

To be used for computer monitors

print

To be used for printed pages

handheld

To be used for handheld devices with small screens

tv

To be used for televisions

projection

To be used for projectors

tty

To be used for teletype terminals

braille

To be used for braille tactile devices

embossed

To be used for paged braille printers

speech

To be used for speech synthesizers - reserved by CSS2.1, but without defined properties (see *CSS2.1: The media types 'aural' and 'speech')

aural

To be used for speech synthesizers, but is now deprecated in CSS 2.1 (see *CSS2.1: The media types 'aural' and 'speech')