As if lousy HTML editors weren't bad enough...

[Roy Tennant]

I was just reading an issue of TidBITS, the excellent (and free) current
awareness newsletter for Mac users (see http://www.tidbits.com/), and was
interested to discover that there was such a thing as an "HTML optimizer".
Wondering what this could possibly be (and being almost too afraid to find
out), I was indeed amazed and dismayed to discover that what such programs
do is remove every little character that it thinks you can do without.
This is all in the pursuit of having the smallest possible file for your
users to save a second or two downloading your pages over their 14.4
modems.

It's bad enough that they remove tabs, line breaks, extra spaces and lines
that can help you to understand the source document. But when they start
"dumbing down" your HTML (which is probably bad to begin with), you're in
real trouble. For example:

"Although HTML purists (and validation programs) may object, most
Web browsers can correctly interpret pages without some elements,
such as quote marks around tag attributes (like <IMAGE
HEIGHT="50">) and tags added by some HTML editors (like
<NATURALSIZEFLAG>)." - Jeff Carlson <jeffc at tidbits.com>

One program will even remove such "superfluous" closing tags as </HEAD>
and </HTML>. Thanks. I could use the help.

Has anyone seen the effects of this yet? Or, (horrors) used them? Anyone
care to make a defense of them before "HTML purist" Thomas Dowling guns
you down in a blaze of validation errors? See
http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-453.html#lnk2 for the whole, sad
story. As if to add insult to injury, you have to pony up $70-80 for these
programs, all for the privilege of having the worst HTML on the block. Go
figure.
Roy