Are there any benefits to having huge linebreaks in HTML code?

Question

Peeking at the sources of this Google helpdoc page, I notice there is a huge gap between the doc declaration and the html.

Other than numerology, I have no idea why this is done: There are 67 line breaks between the top doctype and the html. (And yes, it is late at night - which is why I'm looking in the crevices and such..)

Here's the copy and paste of the first bit:

<!DOCTYPE html>

































































<html>
<head>
<meta http ...

[Naive people will think there's no source code.](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6597224/how-to-hide-html-source) — thirtydot, Oct 25 '11 at 13:55
Probably just the result of the server side rendering of the page. — jhanifen, Oct 25 '11 at 13:58
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because SEO questions without a specific programming focus belong on http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/ — Paul Roub, Aug 29 '15 at 13:51

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 25 '11 at 13:57

Whitespace in HTML is ignored so it has no effect on SEO or page rendering (actually it is rendered as a single space in the browser). Normally whitespace is used to help format HTML so it is easier to read and manage but it can also be used in silly ways such as "hiding" the source code as linked to in the comments. It can also be because a dynamic script output blank lines where no dynamic content is rendered due to variable settings (basically someone's code is a little sloppy). I can't say these reasons apply to this page but I'm sure there's a non-nefarious reason for it.

Aurelio De Rosa · Answer 2 · 2011-10-25T14:45:50.480

1

Nothing. On the contrary, it isn't a good practice because it sends unnecessary bytes to the user. It will slow down the loading for those who have a slow connection like smartphone.

edited Oct 25 '11 at 14:45

answered Oct 25 '11 at 13:56

Aurelio De Rosa

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@guanome lol, sure as it was clear thanks to the **unnecessary**. My mistake :D – Aurelio De Rosa Oct 25 '11 at 14:45

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 25 '11 at 13:58

0

The short answer would be no. It just makes it more annoying when people try and view the source code of a website.

answered Oct 25 '11 at 13:58

ayyp

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 25 '11 at 14:33

Leaving lines necessary doesn't mean any thing just waste of time, thats all.

But You should leave space and use indenting it will be benefiet for you. Because when you see your document after few months you will come to know what you had written, or else you can't even see you tag corrected.

Are there any benefits to having huge linebreaks in HTML code?

4 Answers4