Rebecca sent me a link to an article describing POSH - Plain Old Semantic HTML, which does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of the clean HTML I wish I saw in more websites.

I am often frustrated with the amount of HTML out there that is focussed more on visual layout than it is on cleanly structured information. Most of my frustration stems from the difficulty of maintaining (especially PHP) code when it is full of tables, divs with long arbitrary names, etc. However, properly using CSS and HTML tags isolates your information from your layout, making the information much more accessible to viewers that aren’t particularly interested in the nuances of layout… This is most visible when you attempt to view a complex website using a pretty dumb browser, like an old cell phone.

The less obvious advantage, though, is that machines reading your web pages have less noise to filter through, looking for the information. This relates to two current Internet buzzwords, the Semantic Web, and SEO.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.