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CSS

Posted by Charlie Sattgast
Charlie Sattgast
7,205 Points

What about using a comment instead of negative right margin?

FOr creating a two-column layout it seems like the margin-right: -4px; method of removing the space between inline-block divs is a little messier than David Connor’s preferred method of inserting a comment between divs like so: </div><!--remove space --><div>

Any additional thoughts on this?

David Bath
David Bath
25,940 Points

I have three minor issues with this. First, I think this goes against the principle of separation of concerns. The HTML should be concerned with the structuring the content, not affecting the presentation, which is the domain of CSS. Second, the comment method might be less "messy" in the CSS, but the HTML is more messy. And third, if there are multiple people working on a site, any one of them could accidentally add an extra space somewhere that will affect the layout when using this method.

These are all minor issues. But anyway, it looks like David Conner was promoting this technique several years ago before flexbox gained such wide support. Flexbox would be my preferred layout method now.

As an added note, I wonder if HTML minification would take care of the issue automatically by removing line breaks in the HTML? I haven't tested this.