looking over the xhtml page that is provided as part of the zen garden
project...

what is the purpose of the <span></span> tags?

<div id="benefits">
<h3><span>Benefits</span></h3>
<p class="p1"><span>Why participate? For recognition, inspiration, and
a resource we can all refer to when making the case for <acronym
title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</acronym>-based design. This is sorely
needed, even today. More and more major sites are taking the leap, but not
enough have. One day this gallery will be a historical curiosity; that day
is not today.</span></p>
</div>


thanks very much-
mrt

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/

Laurence Tureaud wrote:

> looking over the xhtml page that is provided as part of the zen
> garden project...
>
> what is the purpose of the <span></span> tags?
>
> <div id="benefits">
>   <h3><span>Benefits</span></h3>

The Zen Garden site is a css demonstration page, a sort of gee-whiz
affair. The markup does not change, but authors can contribute new
stylesheets to change the appearance. None of those authors can add
markup to create new styling hooks. To compensate, the markup was
written to provide as many styling hooks as could be conceived, ahead
of time. As a result, there is a lot of redundant markup, such as the
code you copied, that would not be included in a normal authoring
situation.

hth

--
Brian (remove ".invalid" to email me)
http://www.tsmchughs.com/

thank you brian & others for your thoughtful answers to my silly beginner
questions.

i hope to have better questions soon!

-mrt

Brian <usenet3@julietremblay.com.invalid> wrote:

> To compensate, the markup was
> written to provide as many styling hooks as could be conceived, ahead
> of time. As a result, there is a lot of redundant markup, - -

Part of the reasons for the extra markup is that it lets authors do
things in a manner that works on common browsers with serious problems in
their CSS support, too. For example, <h3><span>...</span></h3> lets the
author make the heading text just as wide as needed, e.g. in order to use
background that wide. For an inline element like <span> that's trivial,
but for a block element like <h3>, there's no practical way at present.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Laurence Tureaud wrote, quoting:

> a resource we can all refer to when making the case for <acronym
> title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</acronym>-based design.

"CSS" is not an acronym, though.

"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
 
>
> "CSS" is not an acronym, though.

In the CSS Zen Garden context, it is understandable that they didn't use
<abbr>, since <abbr> markup is useless for the purpose of styling
as far as IE is considered, and the Garden aims at being a practical
demonstration.

Personally, I would have used <span class="abbr" title=
"Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</span>.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> "Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@ph.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>
> In the CSS Zen Garden context, it is understandable that they didn't use
> <abbr>, since <abbr> markup is useless for the purpose of styling
> as far as IE is considered, and the Garden aims at being a practical
> demonstration.

I don't disagree; but the mere fact that IE doesn't support <abbr> is
IMNSHO no excuse for misrepresenting the term to WWW-compatible
browsers.

> Personally, I would have used <span class="abbr" title=
> "Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</span>.

When I can be bothered, I wrap my <abbr title="..."> elements in <span
class="abbr" title="...">, and when I can't, then IE users just have
to get what their vendor decides they can get.

cheers

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> In the CSS Zen Garden context, it is understandable that they didn't use
> <abbr>, since <abbr> markup is useless for the purpose of styling
> as far as IE is considered, and the Garden aims at being a practical
> demonstration.
>
> Personally, I would have used <span class="abbr" title=
> "Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</span>.

I serve <acronym> to anything claiming to be IE and <abbr> to real UAs,
which is one of a couple of concessions I grudgingly make to it. I also
subtly suggest to IE users that they might like to switch to a web
browser instead.

http://tranchant.plus.com/ie

--
Mark.

Alan J. Flavell wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Laurence Tureaud wrote, quoting:
> 
>
> "CSS" is not an acronym, though.

What it is if not an acronym? 'CSS' is an acronym; 'abbr' is an
abbreviation.

Berislav

--
If the Internet is a Marx Brothers movie, and Web, e-mail, and IRC are
Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, then Usenet is Zeppo.

Berislav Lopac wrote:
 

> What it is if not an acronym? 'CSS' is an acronym; 'abbr' is an
> abbreviation.

An acronym is usually defined as being pronounceable as a word, like
NATO. abbr is indeed an abbreviation, but so is ICBM and CSS. These are
initial-type abbreviations, whereas abbr is a contraction-type
abbreviation (my terms).

These definitions are quite woolly, though...

--
Mark.