[WikiEN-l] Transclusion of formatting templates (again?)

Tue Jun 13 14:42:36 UTC 2006

(originally posted to tech list, but replying here because I think it's 
more on-topic here)

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hi all,
>   There's a bot substituting {{clear}} with the equivalent HTML: <div
> style="clear: both"></div>. There are several reasons I can think of
> why this is a bad idea:

Myself, I never understood the point in it at all. Why do you ever want 
to clear floating elements? It creates ugly stretches of empty space. If 
you feel that you need it in some particular situation, then surely that 
is an indication that the floating elements are positioned badly, and 
using "clear:both" only adds to it by also positioning the section 
headers badly.

If there are too many images on the page, surely the page would look 
better if they were turned into a gallery or removed entirely, instead 
of stacking floating elements left and right.

Timwi