Please stop using these tags
uitrends.com
uitrends.com
This linkbait has cost the author more reputation than it was worth.
To be fair, TFAA does specify that his rule is about <table> for layout.
And yeah, <strong> definitely doesn't belong to the list, TFAA's defense of that in the comment is <weak>.
There are certain things on the page that are less important than a regular <p> or <li>. It would be nice to add some semantic meaning to the article rather than only making the color lighter in the stylesheet.
Screen reader might. And anyway, the subtle semantic difference between <strong> and <b> is that <b> has no semantic significance whatsoever.
That's not very subtle.
<table> (For layout): ok, we heard that one before.
<td>: that could be handy if you like your table to have cells.
<tr>: same, very useful for tables that need rows.
<IFRAME>: sometime useful, that's why you may want to stick to transitional doctypes.
<frame>: see frameset.
<frameset>: ok, don't use that. It's bad UI/UX.
<hr>: fine to use, but hard to style with css.
<br>: line breaks are fine too, just don't confuse them for paragraph breaks.
<font face=”Arial” size=”1″>: yeah, dont' use that, use CSS.
<bold>: use <strong>.
<strong>: use it, it's good semantic (strong emphasis).
<center>: ok, don't use it. Use CSS for presentation.
<map name="Map">: yeah, rarely useful and bad for accessibily/SEO.
<area>: see map.
<b>: use <strong> instead.
XHTML definitely makes life easier for the browser vendors, and if they spend less time debugging their HTML parsing engines then they can spend more time adding CSS3 support!
From the coder's perspective, is it really that much harder to write XHTML than plain HTML? Personally I find writing HTML more of a hassle, but that's just because I use XHTML on a daily basis...
For even more l33t bonus points, use the HTML5 doctype declaration.
<span class="highlight">?
I'd much rather use <strong>.
Perhaps the author feels that only <em> should be used to place "emphasis" on the text in question, and that it should also be used instead of <strong> as strong doesn't give as clear an impression of importance as <em>.
I think you are just fine using <strong> in places where it is appropriate.
That's a pretty weird take on it, given <strong> is supposed to put a stronger emphasis than <em>.
What would be used instead of <strong>, nested <em>s?
You are right about that. I suppose I was just speculating on why the author was including <strong> as a no no. That the thought of "I am 'stronging' this text" didn't indicate significance to him while "I am 'emphasizing' this text" related significance to him. In which case, <strong> would seem like just another name for <bold> while not denoting importance.
I myself did not clearly understand that <strong> was actually more "powerful" than <em>. I appreciate you clearly stating the relationship between <strong> and <em>.
No problem. It's pretty much lifted straight from the HTML4 spec:
> EM: > Indicates emphasis. > STRONG: > Indicates stronger emphasis.
There's a lot of fun stuff in that spec, I don't regret having read it (almost) completely once a long time ago.
Suuuuuuure it will.
Using a central stylesheet to manage your layout, as opposed to scattered HTML files containing markup and presentation, can save immense amounts of time in the long run, particularly if the website you're working on is large.
How is there a way in which being able to make global changes in one place won't save you time?
Maintainability and readability in my opinion are strongly linked and readability really suffers when markup and presentation are combined. Pure CSS layouts go a long way toward making both the markup and the presentation rules easily readable.
And if anyone argues 'But it's only going to be me making the changes, and I'm already familiar with the code.' If you haven't looked at the code for a year, it's like looking at the code for the first time. And you know what they say:
'Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.' - Rick Osborne
CSS, on the other hand, is implemented differently from browser to browser. Depending on the layout, sometimes that's a problem, and sometimes it isn't so much, but it still requires specialized knowledge of CSS and browser-specific quirks.
...to say nothing of all the various css "hacks" that are out there.
Given a complicated site layout, I think I'd rather crawl through some table code than crawl through pages and pages of complicated CSS where declarations at the bottom of the file are subtly dependent on declarations at the top of the file.
Also, let's not forget that CSS was not intended for layout. When it was designed, it was designed for specific purposes, and it's since been warped into a layout language.
So, sure, in principle, I agree that it's better to keep your HTML clean and meaningful, and hide the complexity in a separate CSS file.
But let's not pretend that some designers will save time by switching to CSS only, or that CSS-only is simpler, or that there's anything intrinsically bad about using tables for layout, or that developers have no reason for doing so.
- "CSS Designer" integration projects take 2-3x as long. I get blamed because it "looked great" as a static site.
- It's hard to debug "bad" CSS. (ex: too many "special cases".)
- CSS designers make very attractive sites.
- It's easy to have CSS conflicts when two programs share a page.
- CSS drop down menus are great!
Most of it is a lie, and when it's not a lie everything breaks (many JS behaviors change quite a bit in XHTML-as-XML).
Also, XML blows goats.
> Personally I would say that it's so good that they should probably do away with any non-xml serializations of the DOM...
Wow…
My current conclusion is this: if you worry about tags in HTML then you're worrying about the wrong thing.
Make a website that does something useful. If you do, then we can talk about ascetics. But until that point? Stop sweating silly crap like this.
As for the article, after reading it, go down and read the comments. Many people were unhappy with the article.
There are some tags that should never be used. <blink>blinking text</blink> is an example of a tag to never use. This is because such tags are proprietary and only work with specific browsers. However, if the tag represents the functionality you need, it should be used. Divs should not be used for storing tabulated data, for example. Tables were designed for that purpose. There is little harm in doing something such as this, but everyone should have the proper habits.