CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlxhtmlcode-formattingsemantic-markup
Michael Irigoyen
Michael Irigoyen

Reputation: 22947

How should I format my markup?

When it comes to my markup, I'm anal. It always has to be perfectly indented, easily readable to me, and 100% valid with the W3C. Often time, when viewing the markup of other websites, I'm appalled with the lack of effort by the developer to try to and keep their markup in the browser clean, organized, and valid.

On the flip side, there's a lot of people who will force all their markup on to one, continuous line for the size saving benefits. This annoys me as well, though not to the same extent because it is done with a purpose. But for the most part, it seems like no developer ever actually looks at their markup in the browser and does anything about it.

Understanding that, to the parser in the browser, indents and spaces (usually) don't matter, how should I be handling my markup? Is it worth the extra time to get my markup perfectly easily readable to humans as well as the browser? Are all my \t's and \n's being used in vain?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 160

Answers (6)

bluish
bluish

Reputation: 27292

Yes, in my opinion it is worth. It will be easier to maintain, for you and for other collegues, now and in the future.

About the disadvantage of lower performance, why not to develop a well indented and commented source file and to generate a minimized version to run on the server? It can be acheived with a simple series of regex replacements.

Upvotes: 1

stefan
stefan

Reputation: 2886

There are some browsers who has bugs that renders indented well formed html completely wrong. Such as some versions of Internet explorer with tables and images.

Other than that, i try to keep sane indention, I don't spend to much time with it, just enough to make it easy to debug.

Upvotes: 3

takeshin
takeshin

Reputation: 50638

Is it worth the extra time to get my markup perfectly easily readable

My answer is no. The arguments:

  1. Whoever tries to look at the code probably will want modify it so, for editing the code you need good code editor with code formatting (e.g. Netbeans). You'll very soon need other features like, syntax coloring.
  2. Some users might prefer other type of formatting than you.
  3. Anyone interested in readable HTML may use Tidy (of Tidy extension to Firefox) to format it.
  4. It's a performance issue too: additional overload of formatting + stripping whitespace (and minifying when possible) will speed up the site. It's very important for sites with high traffic.

Upvotes: 2

Jonathan Wood
Jonathan Wood

Reputation: 67175

I like to correctly format my markup, and I think it makes it easier to manage when I do.

Then again, I use ASP.NET and a lot of markup is generated through various controls and classes. In this case, I've decided it is not worth trying to track down each mis-aligned markup and see if something can be done to get the associated control to produce the correct result.

In short, nicely formatted markup is worth it if it can be accomplished without a huge effort.

Upvotes: 1

ChristopheD
ChristopheD

Reputation: 116097

It's worth the effort imho since it helps you understand what exactly is going on in your html page, and that's definitely worth something.

If we want to write clean, elegant code in general this means we should want to generate nice, clean elegant html as well, not?

Upvotes: 1

OldWest
OldWest

Reputation: 2385

Not sure if this answers your question, but as long as the code is valid by W3C, is structured as intended. As far as your view-ability of the code (like view source) structure, that's really up to you, but I would not add too much clutter (comments etc). Use the correct DOCTYPE for your markup and you should be fine with that. I don't see any reason to "waste" time on making the source code from the browser "book" readable. The view source would only be beneficial to you so you can quickly see what's happening at a glance through source view.

Upvotes: 1

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