I need to display the duration of a video. Should I use <time> or should it be used only for displaying time as in a clock?
Example
Is this correct HTML5?
<p>Duration: <time>3:30 min</time>.</p>
Or should <time> be used only on a situation like this?
<p>Good morning. The actual time is: <time>9:45</time></p>.
Docs
MDN presents the following definition:
The HTML element represents either a time on a 24-hour clock or a precise date in the Gregorian calendar (with optional time and timezone information). This element is intended to be used presenting dates and times in a machine readable format. This can be helpful for user agents to offer any event scheduling for user's calendar.
However, the definition in W3C is somewhat different, and it refers duration:
Specifies the date or time that the element represents.
Value: Any one of the following:
(...)
a valid duration string as defined in the [HTML5] specification
Examples:
PT4H18M3S 4h 18m 3s
So, I'm not sure if I should be using <time> in this situation or not. Any thoughts?
Yes, you can use the time element for durations.
But the value has to be a valid duration string, which "3:30 min" is not.
You can use the datetime attribute to specify the correct value, and keep "3:30 min" as element content, e.g.:
<time datetime="3m 30s">3:30 min</time>