Comments on: Inline CSS should not be allowed in strict doctypes

By: prezenty

prezenty — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:58:09 +0000

This is interesting article, I did not it think that it yes. Interesting it knew persons about this how much. Sorry if I wrote bad there now my English is novice and I do not it write yet good.

By: mogens overbeck

mogens overbeck — Sat, 19 May 2007 14:06:38 +0000

In my view inline styles *are* actually a good thing, since you can use them during the initial markup phase - that’s often the way I do it, anyway. I mark up, styling as I go, and in the end transfer the css to an external stylesheet, so for me it’s just a handy way of speeding up the workflow. I see your point though, if it wasn’t allowed, people would be forced to learn better development practices, but I’m not sure I agree that’s the way to go about it :o)

By: Transparent PNGs and IE6 standalone - Friendly Bit

Transparent PNGs and IE6 standalone - Friendly Bit — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 19:44:39 +0000

[...] Two background images later, one that the author could specify (added with a style tag in the head, not with inline styles), and one with the transparency. Everything worked flawlessly in Firefox, Opera, and IE7, as [...]

By: Sean Fraser

Sean Fraser — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:59:04 +0000

Emil: I agree: inline styles should not be allowed in Strict documents. I found twisted irony in my having to do so.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:52:06 +0000

@Sean Fraser: I’ve done that too, real world projects sometimes require you to work with only inline styles. Thing is, the html of those sites are so bad it’s just silly calling them valid anything. You’re in there really mixing style and content in worse ways than we did in 1996!

I’ve done the same, but I don’t think that’s an argument against removing it.

By: Sean Fraser

Sean Fraser — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:45:58 +0000

When I read this in May I nodded and thought how true. Inline styles in Strict should not be done. However. I’ve recently had the pleasure of working on a Strict site where I was not allowed to touch the style sheets but given access to the products’ HTML content. [Styles sheets were in the CMS of the design agency; product pages were client accessible. Don't ask.] I used inline styles for new HTML elements. A real world website, indeed.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 14:19:33 +0000

@Jeremy Nicoll: The relation is clear, whether you choose to see it or not. Doctypes define what elements and attributes are allowed in a document. It could therefore disallow the style attribute…

Why you shouldn’t be allowed to use it “only once”? Because once rarely stay once when you deal with real world websites. If you’ve allowed one step away from the content/style separation you’ll easily do more of them.

By: Jeremy Nicoll

Jeremy Nicoll — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 02:25:36 +0000

The strict doctype has no relation to whether inline styles are used or not. The main idea of CSS is to separate content and styling, and so inline styling is discouraged - but this is something that CSS experts generally encourage and has nothing to do with doctypes. In strict mode, inline styling is perfectly valid as style is a valid property of most objects. The only time that I ever use inline styling is when I am applying a style to an element that I am only going to use once. Why clutter up my CSS file with something that is only going to be used once?

By: Pozycjonowanie

Pozycjonowanie — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:07:37 +0000

Max, you shouldn’t add style attributes with JavaScript, you’re then mixing style and behaviour. Instead, you should add classes/ids and reference them in the stylesheet. Not ideal in a few cases, but the majority of the time that’s the best solution.

By: Esqueça o atributo style. Estilos inline em doctype strict são resquícios do câncer de um passado sem padrões. » Revolução Etc - Web Standards em uma casca de noz!

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:08:09 +0000

[...] Seguindo o exemplo de Emil Stenström qual a diferença entre os dois exemplos abaixo na sua opinião? [...]

By: About Web Designing » Blog Archive » Inline CSS should not be allowed in strict doctypes

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 06:16:33 +0000

[...] Instead, according to friendly bit, the strict doctype requires us to define all CSS in a different file. [...]

By: Justin Perkins

Justin Perkins — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 13:47:38 +0000

I’m with you on that one Emil, great discussion you promoted here :)

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:57:19 +0000

@Justin Perkins: Of course I see your point too. Using inline styles is easier and there are places where it makes sense.

I would implement a tagcloud by picking 10 font-sizes (users won’t notice the difference of 100 different levels) and make a class for each one of them. Then set the size for each tag to one of the above.

Let’s just agree to disagree on that one.

By: Justin Perkins

Justin Perkins — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 05:35:29 +0000

Sorry, that really sucked.

I posted what I was trying to say on my site if you want to see what I so poorly tried to explain.

By: Justin Perkins

Justin Perkins — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 05:23:57 +0000

> Just to get that out of the way, you shouldn’t open new windows. If the user is skilled enough to want it, he will know how to open them.

Ok, but I’m just trying to equate the anti-new window argument to the anti-inline style one. I think they are very similar, philosophically speaking.

So, we’re talking tag clounds (ala Flickr vs. Technorati). If I want to implement a tag cloud like Flickr does (imo is the *proper* way to do it), what’s the cost of doing it the dynamic CSS class way vs. inline styles. Is it worth it (not just to you, but to whoever you are billing/working for)?

> That’s dynamic CSS right there which means it’s as much work writing it to a CSS class as writing it inline

I’m not buying that argument. Every one of your views (a purist like you has to be MVC right?) is passing up dynamic CSS to be stuffed into the document head? Talk about muddling up the code!

I don’t see how this:
I love inline styles

Is worse than this:
I hate inline styles

In fact, that is just too ludicrous to even insinuate.