General Formatting Rules

Code formatting guidelines adapted from Google HTML/CSS Style Guide

Indentation

Indent using 2 spaces. Don’t mix tabs and spaces for indentation.

<ul>
  <li>Fantastic</li>
  <li>Great</li>
</ul>

.example {
  color: #00f;
}

In BBEdit, set tab properties at Preferences --> Editor Defaults

• Make sure "Auto-expand tabs" is checked.
• Set "Tab width" to 2.

Capitalization

Use only lowercase.

This applies to XML and HTML element names, attributes, attribute values, CSS selectors, properties, and property values (with the exception of strings and case-sensitive XML element nodes).

<!-- Not Recommended -->
<A HREF="/">Home</A>

<!-- Recommended -->
<img src="google.png" alt="Google" />

/* Not Recommended */
{ color: #E5E5E5; }

/* Recommended */
{ color: #e5e5e5; }

Trailing Whitespace

Remove trailing white spaces.

<!-- Not Recommended -->
<p>What?</p>__

<!-- Recommended -->
<p>Yes, please.</p>

In BBEdit, you can have trailing whitespace removed automatically when you save.

• In Preferences --> Text Files, make sure "Strip trailing whitespace" is checked.

Encoding

Use UTF-8 (no BOM).

For XHTML, XML, and OPF, specify the encoding within the XML declaration.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>

Make sure BBEdit uses UTF-8 as character encoding for each document, without a byte order mark.