Annoyed with Joel on Software
A quote from Joel on Software’s latest post on the IE8 standards mode by default:
…the way to make a paragraph with small text is <p><small>, but a lot of people wrote <small><p> which is technically incorrect for reasons most web developers don’t understand…
What?! If you’re a web developer and you don’t understand the difference between a block level element (<p>) and an inline element (<small>), you should get a new job. NOW.
I stopped reading the article at that point. It was extremely long-winded and treated the reader like a 5 year old (or upper level management perhaps).
Perhaps if managers like Joel Spolsky wouldn’t set their expectations of technical knowledge so low for their developers, the web would be a tidier place. 
Just kidding Joel. But seriously, inline vs. block? Thats like a web developer not knowing the difference between GET and POST.
Also, CSS is preferable to <small>, especially for a whole element like a paragraph. However, if you check out the source to this paragraph, you’ll see I’m not exactly a purist myself.
Tags: joel on software
March 28th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
True that CSS is the better solution in general. doesn’t have any semantics in html4. If you’re coding for the future, though, html5 gives the semantics of “small print” - literally. ^_^