Chapter 9: Minimizing Markup

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Overview

We've been talking about how building pages with structure can help minimize your markup by separating that structure from the design details. Instead of using tables and images to create borders and customized layouts, we can turn to valid XHTML and CSS for the finishing touch.

One potentially bad habit that is easy to fall into when constructing sites with web standards (and especially those that rely heavily on CSS) is adding extraneous tags and class attributes—when they're not necessary at all.

By taking advantage of descendant selectors in our CSS, we can eliminate the need for unnecessary <div>s, <span>s, and classes. Minimizing your markup means faster, more easily maintained pages—and in this chapter, we'll discover a few simple ways to do it.

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