Best way to add metadata to HTML elements

Question

I\'m trying to put together a way of marking up various components in HTML that get parsed by a jQuery script and created when the page loads.

For example, at the moment

Answer 1

Go ahead and use an attribute for this, but use a data- prefix on it. Attributes with the prefix data- are explicitly allowed on all elements as of HTML5. Example:

It works today in all browsers, and because it's now specified behavior, it's future-proofed.