Writing HTML by hand takes longer than letting a WYSIWYG programme write it automatically. However, the benefits are clear to see. Consider this example from a website we took over from another company:
</FONT></TD> <TD COLSPAN=2></TD> </TR> <TR VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=LEFT> <TD HEIGHT=22></TD> <TD COLSPAN=3></TD> <TD WIDTH=63 ROWSPAN=3 ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP><IMG ID="Picture34" HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=63 SRC="../images/autogen/clearpixel.gif" BORDER=0></TD> <TD></TD> <TD COLSPAN=2></TD> </TR> <TR VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=LEFT> <TD COLSPAN=8 HEIGHT=11></TD> <TD></TD> <TD COLSPAN=2></TD> </TR> <TR VALIGN=TOP ALIGN=LEFT> <TD COLSPAN=3 HEIGHT=3></TD> <TD WIDTH=337 COLSPAN=4 ROWSPAN=3><P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT COLOR="#003366" SIZE="-2" FACE="Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Helvetica">
The only thing this huge section of code does is insert a paragraph break. When we rewrote this page by hand we simplified the code somewhat:
<P>
The result looks exactly the same, but it downloads faster, works on all browsers, and is much easier to maintain.