[WEB4LIB] RE: dreamweaver MX -- Auto Paragraph

[D. Keith Higgs]

Well stated, Michael.  I agree that poorly auto-included tagging is a
bane that must be stopped.

The only thing I would push for that may be construed as controvertial
is to avoid the occurance of anything that is free floating within the
body block. Free-floating, un-contained text can really screw things up
once you get into using CSS to handle your font, color, etc. settings.
Toward that end, all of our page maintainers are instructed that all
text must be contained within some sort of container. They may use P,
DIV, TD, LI, DT, DD, or whatever else they can find but there are to be
no occurances of free floating text that cannot be styled.

Regards,
D. Keith Higgs <mailto:dkh2 at po.cwru.edu>
 Case Western Reserve University
  Webmaster - University Library
  Additional Information at http://www.cwru.edu/UL/

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]
On Behalf Of Hurley, Michael
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 10:21 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: dreamweaver MX -- Auto Paragraph


To voice an alternate point of view, I personally very much dislike <P>
tags. They have their uses I admit, but I can't begin to count the
number of times I've had a problem with layout placing/spacing which
invariably came down to an automatic set (one or more) of <P> tags being
placed in the code. One of the real joys of Dreamweaver has always been
the ability to know that the code you type will not be overwhelmingly
"corrected" by the software. Sometimes such "auto-correction" can save
time, but with <P> tags I've had more time wasted troubleshooting (my
own and others' pages) than I ever had saved by their auto-inclusion. I
use them, but I like them to go where I want them, not in every block of
content. Beyond the use of any particular tags though, I think we all
like to assume that when we save a file, it won't have "useful extras"
automatically added by the software, only to reveal themselves when the
page is checked in a browser. Dreamweaver has been pretty good at
avoiding that in the past.

Michael Hurley
Shriners Hospitals for Children, Portland (OR) mhurley at shrinenet.org