In html5 to set a checkbox as checked, should I simply use checked (as a property) or checked=”checked” ( as an attribute)?

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It is an attribute in either case. And it sets a value (the same value, true) on a DOM property of the element node in either case.

For most purposes, it does not matter which syntax you use. However, there are some points to note:

  • If you use HTML5 in XML serialization (“XHTML5”), you must use checked="checked".
  • In styling, the syntaxes are not quite equivalent when using attribute selectors (the shorter form does not match [checked=checked]), but this does not matter in practice: [checked] matches checked checkboxes in either case.
  • The clumsy syntax checked="checked" is a holdover from SGML and included for compatibility only, so it may make your code look old-fashioned (which rarely matters).

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