On 6/13/06, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote:
(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.
It's quite useful on templates, since you can use a combination of
"clear" and <noinclude> to add usage notes directly to the template
page. If "clear" isn't used and the notes contain an example use of
the template (this tends to come up with infoboxes), the example
(which is presumably "float: right") will overlap with the actual
rendered template.
(This is, admittedly, a rather obscure example.)
--
Kirill Lokshin