Semantic Purity: Page Layout and Inline Style

In striving for the purest ideal of web design standards, and spurred in
part by the XHTML2 discussion, I have been working towards marking up my
web site using only semantic markup.  That is to say, I have attempted
to remove any presentation oriented class attributes and div/span
elements from my pages.  What has me hung up is removing all inline
style.

Where I have trouble is regarding styles used to define the basic layout
of a page.  For instance, if you have a specific image on a specific
page you want floated left/right.  Up until now I have been using inline
style only to define properties, such as floats, which are specific to
elements unique to that pages particular layout.  The proposed possible
removal of inline style, and my desire to achieve semantic purity,
naturally has me questioning this use.

My first reaction is to create a CSS file for each page, and move any
inline style into that.  But then I am faced with the same problem of
needing to add presentation oriented class definitions back into the
markup, class="float-left", and class="clear-right" kinda thing.

So my question to those in the know is, how would one go about doing
this?  And apologies to the list if this has already been discussed, any
pointers so that I can "RTFM" would be appreciated. 

Thanks.

-- 
Chris Hubick
mailto:chris@hubick.com
http://www.hubick.com/

Received on Friday, 24 January 2003 16:35:55 UTC