The <bdi> HTML element, known as the Bidirectional Isolate element, is used to isolate a span of text that may have a different text direction than the surrounding content. This is particularly useful in multilingual web pages where text can be written in both left-to-right (LTR) and right-to-left (RTL) directions. The <bdi> element ensures that the directionality of the embedded text does not affect or get affected by the surrounding text, making it ideal for dynamically inserted content where the directionality is unknown or mixed.
The <bdi> tag is beneficial in scenarios where text directionality can lead to rendering issues, such as when displaying user-generated content or data retrieved from a database. For example, if a user's name in Arabic (an RTL language) is displayed alongside English text (an LTR language), the <bdi> element can be used to prevent the Arabic text from disrupting the layout of the surrounding English text. Here is an example of how the <bdi> tag can be used:
<ul>
<li>User <bdi>إيان</bdi>: 90 points</li>
<li>User <bdi>jdoe</bdi>: 80 points</li>
</ul>Valid Attributes for <bdi>
The <bdi> element does not have any specific attributes of its own, but it supports all global and event attributes. Notably, the dir attribute defaults to auto, which allows the user agent to determine the correct directionality based on the content within the <bdi> element.In summary, the <bdi> element is a powerful tool for managing bidirectional text in HTML, ensuring that text with different directional properties can coexist without causing layout issues. It is particularly useful in multilingual and user-generated content scenarios, where text directionality may not be predictable.