HTML, “@width”, and “@height”

Published on Feb 17, 2011 (updated Feb 5, 2024), filed under development, maintainability (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.

As the width and height attributes are to remain part of HTML, limit their use.

The reason to avoid @width and @height is that they are presentational and hence constitute potential maintainability issues.

The only reasons to ever use @width and @height—alleviating excessive “page jump” issues on page load, providing information about the intrinsic dimensions of the replaced element in question, if necessary, or overwriting such dimensions—should rather be addressed over context, as in #gallery img { height: 100px; width: 100px; }, or over the explicitly presentational style attribute.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for small and large enterprises, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)