I moved this onto a "trimming the fat" thread as I felt it was moving off topic from Jackie's post.
Out of interest how much are you working with/sharing these files in a team environment?
With the generally varying levels of skills (especially with CSS) in most teams I'd say that "real world" is not just about lean mean formatting. In fact the opposite is more likely, I know that if I received CSS stripped to that degree to work with, it would probably slow me down. Of course formatting preferences are a discussion of their own and in this case this is yours. I simply ask to get an idea of your workflow and how others should consider it's application in their own situation.
Nick
What is good coding practice about wasting a byte?
You may say its only a byte, but multiply that one byte by 25 on a style
sheet and multiply that by a few thousand hits and you are talking
bandwidth!
Good coding practice is for classroom, real world you want lean with as
little waste as possible. I look at it like a space mission to the moon and
every byte is weight - the less weight I have for the structure of the
rocket (framework for the site)and still have a solid site, the more room I
have for cargo and mission materials (content).
I always use <b> instead of <strong>, <i> instead of <em>, red or #F00
instead of #FF0000 and so on. Every byte I can save makes for a faster and
leaner site, especially when building a dynamic site. It also leaves me more
room to add more descriptive alt and title tags to my images and links.
However, just like in eating, there are those of us who chew their food 21
times for each bite and there are those of us who chomp and chew enough to
swallow without choking. In otherwords, some want pretty code, others want
the maximum in efficient code. I happen to be in the latter and have learned
to read sites made with one long line of code as easily as the pretty stuff
with new indents for every sub piece and a reduced indent for the way out.
It all works in the end I guess.
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