In the realm of HTML standards, the presence of the "class" attribute holds no inherent meaning. The webpage in question likely contains custom JavaScript code that recognizes and responds to this specific attribute by triggering certain actions based on its assigned values. In the absence of JavaScript functionality, however, the "class" attribute serves no practical purpose. Within HTML, the primary function of the "class" attribute is to designate a CSS classname for the corresponding element.
An illustrative example can be found in the jQuery.validate plugin, which employs a similar methodology to enable inline validation rule assignment. Notably, this plugin opts to utilize data-*
attributes instead of the traditional class
, a choice that aligns more closely with semantic best practices within such contexts.