Example 1

Here's the markup in today's world. In creating this inline-style version, I spent almost an hour in figuring out which styles applied to which cells, and then doing find-and-replace operations to get the desired results, and then correcting for the mistakes I made during this process. Because of my extreme familiarity with the markup and the styles, I was able to avoid making more than a few mistakes. Picture trying to carry out this process without that kind of familiarity.

In order to keep the result as small as possible, I stripped out all of the class attributes and their values, as they were more or less useless for the presentation of the document. Structurally speaking, I reduced the chart from a structured ranking to a soup of indistinguishable table cells. Had I left in the classes, the result would have been at least 10% larger than it already is, pushing the size close to 10Kb. I also reduced hexadecimal color values from the six-digit to the three-digit notation where possible, which was almost everywhere. Had I not used colors which could be reduced in this manner, the size of the markup would have increased still further.

Number of characters in the following example: 8344 (includes markup, content, and whitespace)


<table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr style="background-color: #999;">
<th rowspan="2" colspan="2"><big>Property</big><br/>or Value</th>
<td width="3" style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<th colspan="8">Windows95/98/NT</th>
<td width="3" style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<th colspan="5">Macintosh</th>
<td width="3" style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="background-color: white;">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr style="font-size: smaller; background-color: #CCC;">
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<th>&nbsp;Nav4&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;Nav6&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;IE3&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;IE4&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;IE5&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;IE55&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;Op3&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;Op4&nbsp;</th>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<th>&nbsp;Nav4&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;Nav6&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;IE3&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;IE4&nbsp;</th>
<th>&nbsp;IE5&nbsp;</th>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="background-color: white;">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr style="background-color: #FFC;">
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid gray; font-weight: bold; text-align: right;">5.6.1&nbsp;</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; border-bottom: 1px solid gray; font-weight: bold;"><a href="glossary.html#561">display</a></td>
<td style="background-color: black; border-top: 1px solid black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: #960;">P</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: #960;">P</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: #960;">P</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: #960;">P</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: #960;">P</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: #960;">P</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: #960;">P</td>
<td style="border-top: 1px solid black; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: #FFC; color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>block</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: red;">B</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: red;">B</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: yellow;">P</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>inline</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: red;">B</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; font-size: 10pt; background-color: silver;">[<a href="notes.html#561inline">note</a>]</td></tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>list-item</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: red;">B</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: yellow;">P</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: yellow;">P</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td>none</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: orange;">N</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="font-weight: bold; text-align: center; background-color: green;">Y</td>
<td style="background-color: black;">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>