In this post we’re talking about HTML and why you’re a terrible person.
HTML is a markup language used to build websites. So like most markup languages it’s built with tags. How does this work well Computerphile did a great job at explaining this and I could never match it; never the less, I shall try and fail regardless.
- Have thing to show
- pick the right tag
- open the tag
- type the thing
- close the tag
Say we want a paragraph we need the following.
<p>
text for paragraph
</p>
So p is the tag and you use a forward slash to close it. Simple right, the browser needs the slash to find the end of the section.
Well some tags exist that don’t have a closing counter-part. So you my be thinking in that dumb voice of your’s (god how it infuriates me)
but Colon how do end? What browser do? How it know things?
Well you put the slash inside the opening tag, you moron…..
To enter a carriage return style character you use the tag ‘br’
A line of crap <br/> A new line of crap that is different yet somehow still as crappy as the last
Notice that the slash is at the end of the tag, not at the start. This is to follow the convention of having a slash at the end of a tag set.
Now look, web browsers are very good at figuring out where tags should go if they are missing, as explained here by Computerphile; this is by design of markup languages. You do not have overlapping hierarchy. The interperators that render HTML have thrown this rule out the window however. They will sort it out for you and render it the way you where expecting, rather than throw compile errors at you – which of course aren’t very user friendly.
This is where my problem lies. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. The very notion of deciding to leave out the closing tags or to leave in overlapping hierarchies is counter the reason for allowing browsers to render them in the first place.
I know its a little thing, but this:
<ul>
<li>item1
<li>item2
</ul>
Is just not acceptable in today’s modern era. You are a terrible person.
p.s. This is the most meta thing so far. HTML examples talking about HTML typed in HTML converted to HTML and rendered in HTML. What a crazy world….
</HTML>