Sent by Tribou, Eric on 25 February 2003 21:09
> It is an interesting question, though, whether <span
> style="font-weight: bold;"> is better or worse than <b>. Since we're
> using HTML 4.01 Transitional, both options are available to us, and I
> can't think the semantics of the two are really all that different.
> If we ever moved to XHTML Strict, though, we'd need what we have now
> instead of the deprecated <b>. So it may actually be more
> forward-compatible to burn the extra characters.
> Still, it does seem sort of clumsy, doesn't it?
Now why not create a class and assign it to the span tags rather than an
inline style?
I thought inline styles were a bit counter-intuitive to CSS. Part of the
idea behind CSS being that a single document controls much of the
presentation. Should you need to change that presentation, it's a matter of
editing a single document over multiple HTML files.
It also seems better suited for future changes. If you break the elements
you want to bold down into groups with similar reasons for being bold then
it stands to reason future presentational changes will most probably break
down into the same groups you've already created.
-Eric
