in reply to Re: (OT) CSS Codes
in thread (OT) CSS Codes

Redefining span this way makes about as much sense as redefining (just to get a little perl into this) print to mean foreach.

<span> has a legitimate use -- to make a part of a markup element different from the rest. For example:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http:/
+/www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
span {
    color: red;
}
blockquote{
    margin-left: 6em;
    margin-right: 8em;
    font-style: italic
}
.red {
    color: red;
    background-color:transparent;
}
.b {
    font-weight: bold;
    color: green;
    background-color:#dddddd;
}
.black {
    color: black;
    background-color: #aaaaff;
    width: 8em;
    max-width:8em;
    text-align:center;
}
foobar {
    color: blue;
    background-color: transparent;
    font-size: 1.8em;
    font-style: italic;
}
.foobar {
    color: blue;
    background-color: red;
    font-size: 1.8em;
    font-style: italic;
}
</style>
<title>My title</title>
</head>
<body>
<p><span>this should be red... and it is, because browsers will genera
+lly allow this abuse.</span> But a decent validator (CSS specific or 
+html/css) will tell you something like this:</p>
<blockquote>The &quot;span&quot; tag has no attributes. Attributes are
+ normally used with the &quot;span&quot; element to provide functiona
+lity.</blockquote>

<p>Normal text. <span>red text</span> and back to normal.</p>

<p><span class="b">And this bold, green and with a grey background.</s
+pan></p>

<p class="black">Black</p>

<p class="span">Red? Not today! <foobar> ...because span is NOT a clas
+s.</foobar> However, turning again to our validator:</p>
<blockquote>The &quot;foobar&quot; is not a recognized element in this
+ selector. Is it misspelled?</blockquote>

<p>Well, no, but while it works, there's no guarantee that it will tom
+orrow ... or even today, in some browsers.</p>

<p>dot_foobar (or even id foobar) would be a valid selector... used li
+ke this: <span class="foobar">text rendered as spec'ed by dot_foobar<
+/span></p>
</body>
</html>

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So if you're going to give advice on css, please do so with good advice; that is, with a decent respect for standards.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom