when i am validating my html page there are no errors but there is a warning which reads

trimming empty <span>



i have removed any white spaces and tabs however i get the same warning, following is my code
=============================
<div class="clip"><a class="popups" href="http://www.website.com/filename.html" title="title" rel="images/Jh2TiTNkz7o.jpg"><span style="float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0; width:55px; height:41px; background: transparent url(http://website.com/images/sprite1.gif) no-repeat -10px -10px"></span></a><a class="popups" href="http://www.website.com/filename.html" title="title" rel="images/Jh2TiTNkz7o.jpg">Link name</a></div>
=============================

please advice

thanks

Your code contains this:

<span style="float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0; width:55px; height:41px; background: transparent url(http://website.com/images/sprite1.gif) no-repeat -10px -10px"></span>

Strip the styling out and it's this:

<span></span>

That's the empty span it's referring to.

If I remember, the XHTML 1.0 Transitional doctype accepts empty span, whereas Strict doesn't (correct me if I'm wrong, someone).

If you want to stick with your doctype, putting some text in that span will stop the warning. You can put some text in that refers to your background image and move it out of the way by adding 'text-indent: -9999px' to your inline style.

Hope that helps.

Scott.

Why are you using inline spans in the first place ???