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Are nested span tags OK in XHTML?

Answer 1

A:

SPAN can contain only inline elements, such as SPAN etc.

dusoft 2009-07-03 07:14:15

Answer 2

+11 A:

Yes it will. You can help yourself by using the w3's validator direct input option:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"&gt;
      <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
        <head>
          <title>Title</title>
        </head>

        <body>
           <p>
               <span>Test<span>Nest span</span></span>
           </p>
        </body>
      </html>

RichardOD 2009-07-03 07:26:34

That will answer the "validate" part of the question, but not the "OK" part. The DTD can only describe a subset of the specification.

David Dorward 2009-07-03 08:56:15

thanks. i didn't know about the direct input option!

rick 2009-07-03 23:28:11

Answer 3

+12 A:

Absolutely.

Here's the definition from an XHTML-strict DOCTYPE for a span element.

<!ELEMENT span %Inline;> <!-- generic language/style container -->
<!ATTLIST span
  %attrs;
  >

The "%Inline" part tells me that it can have child nodes from the "% Inline;" entities element list.

The span element is included in the list of elements classed as "% Inline", that combined with span allowing "%Inline" child elements tells me that span is a valid child of span.

joebert 2009-07-03 07:38:02

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Are nested span tags OK in XHTML?

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