why do so many designers use 2 spaces instead of tab in HTML?

just use your editor (if it supports it) to replace two spaces with a tab (\t)

probably because there is no tab in html.
You'd have to use span or pre

I thought he was talking about misaligned code... double spaces won't do anything in html either, you'd have to type   

umm no two spaces exsist in html

there's no such thing as tab

I'm talking about indentation not spaces actually showing up on the rendered page.

Substituting 2 spaces with \t will work for most cases though. I'll give that a try.

I am. Thought it was obvious from the context of talking about indentation and text editors.

You're the first self-proclaimed programmer I've ever seen to bitch about spaces vs tabs in favor of tabs. The first. I've been doing this for over 15 years, and HTML beautifying for about 12. Congratulations!

You don't want to see how KHTML handles that. It's.. really awful. They don't even use a real lexer; they just search for two space chars, and inline strcpy, and place   in place of one, then strcpy the rest.

I found this tidbit when I got bitched at by the 18th warez-trillian-0.4 owner who said my sentences kept having &jibberish. I double space my sentences; it's more legible that way.

I have found that sometimes white space can break layouts from time to time, but the reason I am posting is, why are you paying for a web coder that does that kind of thing?

Congratulations for what? I've been programming for almost twice that by the way... Not that I see the relevance.

Why do you think they invented the tab key in the first place? For indentation. What's the space key for? For separating words and sentences (tokens in code parlance).

Try changing the indentation on a block of code when it has spaces instead of tabs. Both vi and Textmate don't like it very much. I hate 2 spaces. What are you still using DOS with an 80x25 character display? Change your screen resolution and font size. 2 spaces is like a few millimeters. Barely even noticeable that it's indented. If you use tabs you can let the user control tab sizes, thus letting the user choose their preference. Congratulations for making it really difficult for me to notice the indentation.

Gee, let me hit space 4 times to indent instead of tab once. Want to go back, now I have to hit delete multiple times. Congratulations for wasting my time.

If I'm editing HTML code and I hit enter to create a new line and then hit tab to indent... well it indents different distance from the code below that should be at the same indentation level. Congratulations for fucking up my indentation.

If I want to change the indentation and highlight a block and tell it to unindent, guess what, it only goes to the left 1 space instead of 1 indentation level. Congratulations for wasting my time yet again.

BTW, I used to use spaces about 15 years ago when I programmed in DOS. It made sense back then because 8 spaces for tab was huge. But that's not the case anymore. Almost nobody uses 8 spaces for tab and screen resolutions are much higher now. A wise UNIX teacher taught me to use tabs and that was some of the best advice I have ever been given.

Fucks spaces AND tabs.

Format C

I never use html tricks for designing a page. It's perfect possible with css alone.

Two spaces is the proper space between a sentence for a paragraph.

no tab at all

that should do the trick

most everyone that I've seen that does that is using dreamweaver with its out of the box settings

Then it must be a new-school thing to use Tabs over spaces. Every young programmer here uses tabs, older guys use dual-spacing. Must be something theyre are teaching now... Im self-taught and prefer tabs.

Just html code formatting? Who cares

Actually about 15 years ago it WAS better to use spaces than tabs. I hinted on a few reasons for that earlier but now they don't apply anymore IMO. Also, text editors work well with tabs, they don't work well with spaces.

tryre adingadocume ntthatisnotf ormattedcorrec tlyanddo esnotfol lowanygo odrulestom akeite as ytoreadan dtheny outellme formatt ingdoe snot ma tter.

Sadly, I read that just fine.

Its easier

... gosh, that's gotta suck. I hate the "search/replace" feature myself.

So...
*PHP syntax doesn't meet your standards
*Dreamweaver doesn't cut the mustard
*30+ years as a fulltime programmer

With all that experience have you ever considered creating your own tools or contributing to any open source projects?

haha, only amongst programmers can this frikking argument occur!!!

personally, I'm a tab man, and as soon as I see code with spaces for indentation, be it 2 or 4 or whatever, I find what is the tab equivalent and search all/replace.

Each to their own.

Now should opening braces go on a new line or follow on the same line of the code they open?

That is worth an argument......

I personally open braces on the same line that they open as I treat them as a colon or semi colon - they are following on from what was just said, but is in a new context. Those poooofters that just open braces on a new line can't follow the code and so need to visualise where they've opened a brace to be able to close it.

:P

I have but finances don't allow me to right now. I used to write tutorials on operating system development back when I was in high school. Loved it. I also have some ideas for new development methodologies that I want to prototype and experiment with but needing to work and pay the bills keeps me away from them. Probably for the better right now. I find myself ignoring everything else and spending a whole week reading arcane computer science papers if I don't watch myself. Eventually I want to write my own language / environment focused on web application development. I haven't decided if I will open source it though. I've thought of doing some open source work with factor, parrot or rubinius to get me some experience in the field when I have more time.