How not to do embedded html

[wjcampbe]

Working on a site at the moment and my lovely layout work was being screwed up somewhere. Tracked it down to embedded HTML

Property:!!< <FONT SIZE=1 FONT COLOR="red" > >!! value !!< <FONT SIZE=1 FONT COLOR="green" > >!! property:!!< <FONT SIZE=1 FONT COLOR="red" > >!! value.!!< <FONT SIZE=1 FONT COLOR="green" > >!! property!!< <FONT SIZE=1 FONT COLOR="red" > >!! value !!< <FONT SIZE=1 FONT COLOR="green" > >!! property:!!< <FONT SIZE=1 FONT COLOR="red" > >!! value!!< <FONT SIZE=2 FONT COLOR="green" > >!!
property: value !!< <FONT SIZE=5 FONT COLOR="green" > >!!

once I cleaned it up to read

Property:!!< <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="red" > value </FONT><FONT COLOR="green" > property:</FONT><FONT COLOR="red" >  value.</FONT><FONT COLOR="green" > property </FONT><FONT COLOR="red" > value </FONT><FONT COLOR="green" > property:</FONT><FONT COLOR="red" > value</FONT><FONT COLOR="green" >
property: value </FONT> >!!

all the layout problems went away - AND I'll bet the site does better in the SERPS too with all that badly formed HTML removed.

[TraceyHand]

did it even work like that? It's kinda extreme

haha...extreme embedding...sounds like some sort of bizarre sport!

[Duncan Rounding]

This compounded embedding is the reason I never use the 'in-built' Actinic formatting, however that said the resultant html is usually fairly clean and hasn't ever broken my layout
.
I've never seen it cause the 'double' ue of FONT in that way. I tried to reproduce this in the product description but couldn't. How did you do it?

[jont]

the reason I never use the 'in-built' Actinic formatting

Best avoided like the plague if you care about clean code.

Have not tried since the alpha testing but does it still retain all the in-line formatting (set back to the default colour) if you apply a new colour and then switch it back again?

[Duncan Rounding]

Short answer is yes - perhaps because there is no 'revert to default'.

[wjcampbe]

How did you do it?

I did not do it, which is why I had to track it down.

All those font opening statements with no closing tags in sight (site OMG)....aaaargh