Offtopic: html gurus ... is <br /> valid ?

["Eric G . Miller" <egm2@jps.net>]

<OFFTOPIC>

Surfed over to salon.com with the links browser and <br /> showed up all
over the place. So I looked at the source, and sure enough, there was
<br /> all over the place.  Now it's my understanding that browsers are
supposed to ignore tags they don't understand -- which links is clearly
not doing -- but what on earth could be the purpose of such a thing?

A <br> tag has no end tag, so it doesn't need <br>...</br>, and the SGML
shorthand <br>..</> wouldn't be legal... 

Ouch, just noticed </li>'s.  Those aren't needed either are they? There
isn't even an environment for the <li> tags!

Netscape renders this stuff fine -- must be exceedingly tolerant.

</OFFTOPIC>

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