FIVE TAGS IN HTML THAT ARE WRONGLY USED

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FIVE TAGS IN HTML THAT ARE WRONGLY USED

Website Design

Monday, 06 July 2009 12:58 Written by Administrator

Misused HTML tagsPeople started using HTML after 1995 for creating websites. With time, there have been newer technologies coming up and this has in fact changed the way HTML tags could be used. This article is aimed at conveying that the simplest tags are being misused so much so when there is an alternative. HTML was being used to decorate a page and also add content to it. With the introduction of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the styles are completely taken care of it and fewer HTML tags can be used to make better pages. The 5 HTML tags who’s uses have tremendously changed are:

<small> and <big>
<table>
<frame>
<font>
<imagemaps>

Now let us see each tag in detail and how it is being misused.

<small> and <big>
The small and big tags are misused to set the font size. They are comparative tags and should not be used to set the font size. There is always a question which arises when these tags are used. How small is the small tag and How big is the big tag. Generally these tags are not used to set the size of the font. Further <b> and <i> tags are visual tags. Instead of using these tags, <strong> and <em> tag can be used. When these tags are used, the advantage is that it works in all browsers and also they are logical tags. So people can know that these tags are used to emphasize upon some point.
<table>
This tag is one of the most misused tag while designing web pages. A table tag is simply used to show data in the form of tables. This tag is misused to represent data in an order that the designer wants. Previously, when CSS was not available, laying out the websites was a hectic task and hence web designers used the <table> tag because it was an easy way to the solution. However this was never the semantic meaning of this tag. Further, a lot of space is wasted in the web page if this tag is used for layout.
<frame>
This tag is in general used to split the given webpage into different areas which can run on their own. This is generally used for those parts of the page which remain the same for almost the entire website. So when a new page is clicked, this part of the page remains the same. This makes effective use of the bandwidth of the user. But the disadvantage is that whenever a search engine searches for some data and if it’s available in a particular frame and if a different frame is loaded, it frustrates the end user. The reliability factor for frames is quite less.
<font>
The font tag is generally used for expressing a given content in an attractive way. Having said this, the font tag has only 3 attributes namely: Type of font, size of font and color of font. No other styles can be added to this. Hence the use of the font tag is becoming less and experts are using CSS to describe the style of the text.
<imagemaps>
This tag is supposed to be the most confusing tags in the end users perspective. The <imagemaps> is basically a linking tag where different parts of the image can be clicked to go to different links. It might look appealing but considering a first time user who goes to the website, he / she might not know where to click and which part of the image will take the person where. If the user’s internet bandwidth is less and the picture could not be loaded, it makes things all the more worse. Hence this tag should be used only at places where the image is self-explanatory, maps for example.