Spaces and new lines with HTML and CSS

Question

Should I use <br /> and   in HTML to position elements, or should I just use CSS display:inline with padding/margin for positioning and all styling? what are pros and cons with both?

Answer 1

<br /> has its uses, but if you find yourself using &nbsp a lot, I would consider finding better ways to align things.   is just ugly and clunky.

If it's tabular data, use a table. Your life will be much happier.

If it's not tabular data, use css, as BalusC suggests.

Answer 2

Use <br> to represent a linebreak inside a block element and use   to represent a non-breaking space inside an inline element. Nothing more. For the remnant just use CSS the smart way with help of under each the display, float, padding and/or margin properties.

Answer 3

Ideally you should position everything with css, and only use <br /> (line break) and   inside <p>s. But this isn't an ideal world ;)

Answer 4

<br /> Can really go either way. But if you find yourself using it to adjsut paragraph spacing orsomething like this then you really have to ask yourself "is there a reason why im using breaks instead of applying a class to adjust margins?"   on the other rarely if ever makes any kind of sense outside of a paragraph (<p />) and half the time theres not much use for it ther any how as using text-indent is preferable for indenting the first paragraph and much to the chigirn of Editors everywhere im completely opposed to the double space prepending of senetences on the web - as far as im concerned that is a print only thing.