posh-faq

POSH FAQ

Frequently asked questions about posh. Please add new questions for which you don't have answers to posh-issues.

Q&A

Do extra DIVs make a page less POSH

Is a web page POSH (and I am talking about the plain old part here) when you add a number of HTML elements usually divs to get a desired visual effect? For example a small test page uses six extraneous divs to get the racing stripe background. A web page can use semantic HTML but is overusing/abusing HTML elements forgetting the plain old part of the equation of POSH. - Nick

• In my opinion, as long as you are only using the "plain" elements DIV and/or SPAN for such visual effects (rather than, say, extra BLOCKQUOTE elements purely for visual effect), a web page is still POSH as long as you have marked up the content with semantic HTML, and the extra DIVs/SPANs are in addition, not instead of, such semantic HTML. Adding extra DIVs or SPANs purely for a visual effect is semantically neutral and therefore doesn't detract from the page's POSHness. However it could also be said that any extra non-semantic (even neutrally semantic) markup dilutes the markup that is semantic and therefore should be minimized. There may be an opportunity to come up with a class name to assert that an element (e.g. a DIV or a SPAN is purely presentational (the assumption being that all other elements in the document are semantic and thus POSH by default) and could be ignored for semantic reasons, which would allow any future POSH parsers to easily ignore such markup. Maybe a classname like "phook", short for "presentational hook", which you could use in your example e.g. <div class="phook container0">. Tantek 09:29, 25 Apr 2007 (PDT)