Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I support using html 5 new features, but I
don't like the idea of
> starting to strip tags "just because we can".
> Currently MediaWiki does quite a good work on it. I don't see a reason
> to start removing tags. Yes, allegdely there's an space improvement but
> still...
It's something to consider. It will improve not
only space, but also
readability. Here's the doctype and <head> for
http://aryeh.name/, in
valid HTML 5:
[...]
> Look at those two side by side for a minute, the first and the third,
> and tell me there's no reason to go with the first one if there's
> demonstrably no difference in how browsers treat them. Improving
> legibility for human readers of our HTML source isn't a *major* goal,
> but I don't think we should disregard it entirely, especially when
> there are modest size improvements to be had as well. The only reason
> I can think of to avoid it other than "leave well enough alone" is for
> the sake of screen-scraping bots.
[...]
I don't know what Platonides' point was specifically but
personally I find "hanging" tags (e. g. lacking close tags)
very error-prone. I think if one has to explicitly close
elements the probability of a "missed" one (that leaves text
bold till kingdom^Wthe next paragraph starts) reduces dras-
tically. Same goes for attributes in '"'s - if you put them
around all your attributes, you do not have to think about
whether each single attribute has a value that needs them.
So, while you could save some bytes in this process, you'd
have to spend much more time in testing.
Tim