After reading this article, Why does clean markup matter in web design?, I got a better idea of what “clean” markup is and how I can implement it into my own web publishing and HTML and CSS markups. For example, I never imagined that ensuring your markup is clean and tidy would actually save you money in the long run. I knew it would save you time and headache if you (or anyone else) had to go back in and make adjustments, but saving money is a huge bonus that I don’t think many people consider.
HTML has been around for a long time but during its existence it has grown and changed and acquired a few “sidekicks” along the way. Because of these constant changes, it’s vital to utilize clean markup so that your webpages are easily understood and adaptable. Also, clean markup ensures faster webpages. And everyone loves faster webpages.
Clean markup is often a neglected or rarely touched upon issue when it comes to web design and web publishing. I know that for myself, in the beginning, I didn’t think that clean markup was that big of a deal. I definitely had the mindset of “as long as it works it doesn’t matter.” This article, as well as some discussions in class, opened my eyes though and now I’m always going to try my best to achieve clean markup standards.
While at first I wasn’t entirely sure, I now know that clean markup means free of clutter. Having clean markup means that your markup is standards-compliant and that you’re using the tags and structures of each language for their intended purpose. This may sound complicated or like too much to remember, but in reality it is a very simple concept and is quite beneficial in the long run.
Having clean markup is achievable by using tags in the way they were intended to be used, naming your CSS classes and IDs using meaningful terms, validating your HTML, CSS and XML and correcting as many errors as possible, not injecting inline styles or extraneous tags and attributes just because you’re in a rush, and finally, not settling for “it works.” Remember that just because a page renders your markup, doesn’t mean that the markup under the hood is standards-compliant, problem-free or search engine friendly.
Something I was confused about in the reading though was the fact that the author said that as a web designer and publisher, you should only use the h1 tag once on each page. I thought that it was okay to use h1 multiple times on a page – I didn’t think that using it more than once would do any harm. I know SEO uses your h1 tags but does having more than one h1 interfere with that process?
Overall, make sure that you construct your website right the first time so that you don’t have to later waste more resources in order to correct your original wrongdoings. You’ll save yourself a lot of stress!