Hey**Alan_*, I saw your post, that’s awesome. I was thinking though… if you’re doing it with posts, I thought about it this way. What about 2 loops like this:

Loop 1 showing first 2 posts (post 1)
(post 2)


Loop 2 showing 2 posts with an offset of 2 (post 3 here)
(post 4)

That’s REALLY basic, but would something like that work? You’d have to have a set number of posts, but usually that doesn’t change, right?

Ha!**Shimon_* that’s exactly what I was looking for and couldn’t find it, so I ran with my own “hack”. Thanks for the link! It’s much more useful than my crappy little post. ;)

Well. Joe Clark. Fancy meetin’ you here. :) I absolutely get that point, and I admitted I never tested this across browsers and I didn’t even try to validate it until someone called it invalid. The reason was because this was going on a personal blog which, though I’ve shared, is not designed for anyone but me. I had never intended to use this technique on a public site and was suggesting it with that in mind.

So here are some of my questions following this surprising controversial span topic.

• Is it always wrong for a snippet of code to be invalid?
• Is invalid code by itself inherently harmful?
• Does it make a difference what people do with their personal sites?

My point here isn’t to down-talk web standards, validation, accessibility, any of that. I guess I’m concerned with a couple of things.

• When does one’s personal coding practices become someone else’s business, well-meaning as they may be?
• Is there a big picture here, something more important than absolutely, completely 100% valid code?
• If there is, doesn’t presentation play some part?

I was simply trying to achieve a small bit of compromise in a sticky situation, giving an added element to split up the list while keeping it readable, accessible, all that when styles are off. I realize divs would have been more valid, but they would have broken the list and made everything look/behave wrong, so the best option obviously is to do nothing here — which is what I have always and will continue to do for clients and other public web sites. But, if you don’t have a problem with some occasional invalidation — on a personal site — I don’t see anything wrong with doing something like this.

Michael, that’s not the way I take it but that’s not even the issue. The thing so many people are talking about is this:

1. why is it any of your business?
2. why do you have to say it publicly?
3. the fact that, unlike you, i’m sure, most of the comments we get about validation issues are in fact pretty rude and often do pass judgment on our skills as a designer, particularly if — heaven forbid — one might “claim” to be a standards loving designer.

It’s the same thing with Christianity, Michael, really. How many times do I need to justify myself as a Christian and what kind of Christian goes around pointing out the mistakes of fellow brothers and sisters a) without solicitation and b) in front of the world for others to see? I don’t want this kind of “Christian” anywhere near me and nor do I want “standardistas” nipping at my heels telling me where [they think] I’m failing as a standardista myself.

Can you imagine someone saying to a fellow Christian “Your behavior is invalid and you can’t call yourself a real Christian until you fix it.”?

And again, my sites typically validate and how many ways can I say it, I’m not against validation or people privately and politely pointing out a mistake I might not know about, but my issue here is a) why do you care what I do on my personal site that’s just for me, and b) all other things passing (accessibility, usability, browsers, colors, etc), is it the end of the world if a site doesn’t validate for something as minor as a couple of spans in a list? Do people even look at WHY a site doesn’t validate? I think most people just see that red bar and run off to cry foul before giving any consideration to the reality that some sites just don’t validate. For example… I’m still trying to get the