Making up tags – WHY is it wrong?

[Johann]

Please give me good reasons why this is forbidden — other than IE the party pooper, and other than “they might invent a tag with that identifier one day”:

http://jsfiddle.net/FhqKg/

And no, I’m not trolling, I’m seriously asking. Feel free to flame me, I probably deserve it for being a reckless fool, but it’s a honest question :)

[Johann]

Of course I would never use it for stuff I do for other people. that’s a given. but when it comes to myself, well, I’d be the one taking the risk… and I just earlier had to think about how not long ago, everybody (including me) “properly closed” their br tags, just to validate – and for what? To now forget that ever happened. Heh.

Not saying this also applies here, but still, just doing what’s right for the sake of some vague notion of doing what’s right is not enough to stop me from at least seriously considering the potential uses of this… (I’m thinking mostly CSS/HTML complexity/size, but also fun and rock’n’roll, plus a way to give IE the finger :D)

[edit: And at the very least, kind of owe it to myself to make a website with no classes, no ID’s, just tags! And make it real pretty too, so that people actually want to look at how it’s made, bwahaha. Hmm I’m sorry, It’s late/early here, I need to go to bed :P]

[TheDoc]

To be honest, I had no idea that this was even possible – it’s a very cool idea. I’m sure there are accessibility issues there (screen readers and what not), though I could not cite them for you.

[joshuanhibbert]

It doesn’t work at all in IE 8 or below. But that makes sense, otherwise you wouldn’t need the HTML5 shim in IE 8 and friends.

[Johann]

Yes, of course if you make up your own tags for just about everything, that would suck (as tempting as it would be to use “bq” instead of “blockquote”, seeing how there is “q”…) I pay too little attention to accessibility anyway (who doesn’t :/ ), but I don’t want to make it worse for no good reason.

But what about d instead of div? and s instead of span? those have no semantical meaning anyway, right? so why use 13 or 11 characters where you could use 7… times a billion! It’s mostly because I’m playing around with making my own CMS, so these things “pay off (a little) in bulk”, and it’s at least thinkable to change back again without dying inside. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother, but I love shaving bytes off here and there :D

[Johann]

@joshuanhibbert well, then it should also be possible to extend such shims for custom elements :D

Although I’m *really* liking the idea of just saying bye to IE-(specific stuff) for good (for my own stuff, naturally), because it saves soooo much hackish BS which ruins the whole quest for elegance. So currently my plan is to make it look bearable in IE, no further effort/hacks, and completely ignore it javascript-wise when it comes to admin stuff, admins need to use real browsers.

[Johann]

“But please, code with standards in mind.”

And that means? I make websites, not browsers, I don’t invent tags for others to use, either. So — lol? I’m not setting standards for anybody, I make my own website.. Microsoft, heh. If my website breaks, because “d” and “s” suddenly get a meaning (very likely, yes?), that’s my loss. And yes, I knew about XML, but my point is, it never mattered. It mattered for strict validation, not ever for rendering. Well, in some cases, but people simply blindly did it. So if “abide by the standard” is just another wording for “they might invent a tag with that name some day”, then read the first post. I’d take that risk :P

[joshuanhibbert]

@Johann you just need to create the DOM element using JavaScript. Not sure why you would though, as @wolfcry911 said.

[Johann]

“Not sure why you would though, as @wolfcry911 said.”

Because d_l is shorter than div style=”float:left;” (or even div class=”fleft” as I have it now *),

[Brightonmike]

I think some of you are being a bit rude to the guy.

He was just asking, being curious.

It might be wrong, but seriously, play it cool. He actually makes a fair point, in a sense. My argument would be, where would you draw the line?

You do need some “structure” and “standards”. Helps people learn more than anything. Also accessibility is a big issue here.

[joshuanhibbert]

Good call @Brightonmike, no need for the unfriendliness at all!

[Johann]

Don’t worry… I know my stuff well enough to simply do what I wanna do. And I’m aware it’s an, uhh, offensive question for some, and I can see why. But still… when for example about everyone uses jquery instead of learning javascript, that’s fine, but when I use d instead of div for my own little site, I’m Microsoft? That doesn’t offend me, I find that funny ^^

“In terms of accessibility this would be horrific”

… that makes no sense to me, sorry! How is a div or a span “accessible”, or different in even just *one* aspect from a made up tag like “d” ? They contain zero semantics to begin with, any meaning they might have they get from CSS humans make.

Yet I have to admit, I am really hard pressed to find a good use for this, lol. replacing all div’s by d on a normal page results in zero gain, just about anything else I could change would have a more drastic effect. But for example <clr></clr> instead of <div class=”clr”></div> = tempting! Or maybe “cl_” because that doesn’t seem likely to ever become an official tag.

You see, there IS no official tag for clearing, and when you come across class=”clear” in a document, you are not supposed to assume any semantical meaning. So what’s the problem? What is the difference between <div class=”some_class_you_never_heard_of”> and <some_tag_you_never_heard_of> ? Both are semantically void. That is the bottomline.

HTML5 doesn’t have self-closing tags now because “it’s not XML” or something. Great. Instead of simply making certain tags empty, and allowing that short syntax for tags that need to be closed… bleh! Now, I don’t want to be ungrateful, when I read the w3 specs I am often amazed at the detail, my hat truly is off to these people that they can agree on ANYTHING, much less so much useful stuff. But that doesn’t mean everything makes sense to my little head. So as long as I can get away with it, why not make my own website as *I* want it? If it’s unaccessible, the web will cope :P

[Johann]

@krysak4ever

“if you want, invent your own language why not”

What exactly do you think making your own stylesheet lego blocks is, in a way? Anyone doing anything remotely interesting is inventing their own conventions for things on a small scale. So call that HTML5+J or something… your browser understands it, it’s just that you don’t :P

“but don’t screw the one that works ;]”

Dude, winking smileys do not replace a clueful argument, and you don’t seem to have one. How is the HTML bastardization I come up with affecting how others make their website, or the standard? Not at all. To compare this to Microsoft having a monopoly with a crappy browser — wow.

And people “like me” set stuff back? Because I think for myself and make wacky stuff for myself? LMAO!!! Yeah, of course ^^ If those are your arguments, they are actually FOR doing it, I thought you might want to know that.

[Johann]

To recap, because this does boggle my mind a bit:

I never learned flash, cuz it’s Adobe. The same goes for MS stuff. Right now I am getting into javascript and try to avoid jquery et al for as long as I can, maybe forever. No minifying, either.

How many of you guys can say that? “use jquery, use the CDN”, yay new interwebs. And because I am even just *considering* to use d instead of div, I get clearly identified as some who sets stuff back? This seriously makes me want to do this. If this is enough to bring out the mindlessness, bring out the mindlessness, where I can burn it easily.

[TheDoc]

@Johann – perhaps this thread has gone a little sideways, but for the most part it seems like you have made your mind up already! If accessibility, SEO, and IE aren’t a priority for personal projects – then go for it! It would certainly be an interesting experiment at the very least.

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