HTML Whitespace: A Deep Dive into the Mess and Potential Solutions
2025-02-07
This article delves deep into the complexities of whitespace handling in HTML. Through numerous examples, the author reveals the various rules governing HTML's whitespace treatment, including the differences between inline and block elements, `
` tags, and the `white-space` CSS property, and how they lead to unpredictable rendering results. The article also analyzes the challenges faced by automated formatters, content management systems, and minification tools when dealing with HTML whitespace. A potential solution is proposed: using a quoting syntax to distinguish between code whitespace and user-visible whitespace, though it's acknowledged this would be a massive breaking change. Finally, the author suggests practical tips to mitigate issues arising from HTML whitespace handling and proposes adding a new HTML entity `&ncsp;` to represent a non-collapsing space.Read more
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