Comments on: Give Me a

By: David Hucklesby

David Hucklesby — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:26:33 +0000

John: Unless you have a particular audience in mind, I’d say you have set Mani a near impossible task. In short, the web is not print. In long, consider these facts:

- Computer manufacturers can, and do, ship computers set to different dpi settings

- Computer owners can, and do, change various settings that control text size

- Not all computers have the font faces installed that the designer specifies

- Devices with small screens will probably display shorter lines than a desktop PC

- Except for the Opera browser, background images do not change size along with text size

Even if you narrowly define a computer as a PC running Windows XP, all the above variations apply. It’s a bit like everyone having their own automated printer, but each printer has different font faces. Would you expect the line breaks to appear the same place everywhere?

By: Sheriar Designs

Sheriar Designs — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:49:34 +0000

Andrew: Very cool idea (even though totally beyond my simple scripting capabilities) but the tags being there, in the browser, is exactly the problem I was trying to avoid!

By: Andrew Berkowitz

Andrew Berkowitz — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:44:11 +0000

Just to add another layer to this, if I were doing it I would probably put the text in the physical .html file with hard returns and then as the pages were served up use a server-side script (PHP or whatever) to add in the tags. That way you get the advantage of the semantic code but much more manageable if you want to add/change/delete text.

In other words
I would write the text
just like this
in the HTML file

But it would be magically get the tags added when served to the browser.

By: Sheriar Designs

Sheriar Designs — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:36:24 +0000

John: Hehe … it is a relatively simple thing to insert a break tag (
) to force a line break. However, I try always to aim for writing semantic code, which means using html elements for their given purpose, not for presentation. The breaks that you wanted were presentational only, as opposed to breaks in an address. One reason this is not a great idea is that blind users will have each line break read out to them by their screen readers, thus breaking the flow of the sentences.

I know this probably sounds incredibly anal – but you can appreciate that, right? ;o)

Perhaps it is a bit “silly” in this case, but it is part of my job and also my passion to work towards continuously improving my ability to create accessible websites and I don’t like to compromise that even for something small like this. Best practices are best practices.

As a final note, I’ll add that semantic, accessible code benefits not only blind users, but also browsers without style sheets, text browsers, PDAs, search engines, etc.

(ps – fixed your name – sorry!)

By: John

John — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 22:01:09 +0000

Wow! I really am unsuited for web design. Are you telling me that breaking a line of copy is not just a matter of inserting a “return”? Unbelievable.

Also, as a Control Freak, I need to point out that it’s “Malmquist Design” (not “Malmquist Designs”).

…can’t wait.

John