1144: Tags

2012-12-07T11:42:19Z

134.130.182.237: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1144
| date = December 7, 2012
| title = Tags
| image = tags.png
| titletext = <A>: Like </a>this.&nbsp;
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|HTML}} is a markup language used in web development, and is the subject of this comic. The comic employs multiple poor HTML practices while asking the rhetorical question of how best to annoy web developers, effectively answering the question that it poses.

First, in HTML, all tags should be matched with both an open and close tag <code><div>Like this</div></code>.

Second, previous to HTML 4.01 all tags were uppercase (technically elements were uppercase and attributes were lowercase "to improve readability" [http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/about.html#h-1.2.1]) to make it easier on the browser to parse what was markup and what was content on the page. As is the case with nearly every change to the HTML specification, many developers slowly got lazy and stopped making every tag uppercase forcing browser developers to check for both upper and lowercase as they parsed the markup. When the specification was bumped to XHTML 1.0 it stated that no one should use uppercase tags any more, everything should be lowercase.

Third, the amount of <span> and <div> tags should be kept low, for they are no good markup. A markup language should only use as many elements as necessary, and elements that have a meaning.
Most web designers use <div>, <span> and <table> tags excessively simply for design reasons. Unlike lists, images or emphasizes, divs carries no semantics.

Fourth, there are special characters in HTML, which make the page less readable during edit, and should therefore be used with caution. &nbsp; is the HTML escape code for {{w|non-breaking space}} which is a type of space that will keep two words together, and will not allow word wrapping to separate them. This is useful for keeping units with a number so it is easy to spot 100 km instead of needing to hunt for 100<br />km. The &nbsp; used here is superfluous at that position.

==Transcript==
:<div>Q: How do you annoy a web developer?</span>

{{comic discussion}}

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1144: Tags