What's the difference between <div> and <span>

**Cudabean** · May 7th, 2002, 10:50 PM

I use <div> but never use <span>. Sometimes I've seen things where <span> was used where I'd have used a <div> and it looks really strange.

Is it just a matter of preference?

I'm a <div> kinda guy. How 'bout you? Join the <div> generation?

cudabean

**CiberTHuG** · May 8th, 2002, 08:48 AM

DIV is block level, SPAN is inline. That is the difference.

For more on that, check with the W3C.

WALDO · May 22nd, 2002, 04:27 PM

Originally posted by CiberTHuG
DIV is block level, SPAN is inline. That is the difference.

In simple terms, generally a div is a block-level element, meaning that a div will create a "block" around whatever it encapsulates. A span takes the shape of whatever it encapsulates. It doesn't create a "block".

Code:

<html>
  <body topmargin="0" leftmargin="0">
    <div style="background-color: gold;">This is my block<br/>I can put many things into it<p>note the color fills the whole "block"</p></div>
    <span style="background-color: pink;">This is my span<br/>I can put many things into it<p>note the color wraps around ("inline")</p></span>
  </body>
</html>

**JoshT** · May 23rd, 2002, 11:10 AM

Note that CSS can determine whether a tag is block or inline (or neither), which really should make the div and span tags obsolete as we move towards XML.

**CiberTHuG** · May 23rd, 2002, 11:53 AM

True that.

But I'd like a generic tag that doesn't have a representative conitation (and isn't predefined in the XHTML DTD), so I can keep making invisible containers to help with layout.

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