I originally wrote this over two years ago. It was getting a little long in the tooth, especially now that HTML5 has come along and made HTML far more beautiful than even XHTML 1.1 was. So I updated it!

I can’t help but view source on every nice looking website I see. It’s like if you had x-ray glasses that allowed you to see any person you ever saw in their underwear at will. How could you not? It’s just so tempting to see if a beautiful website is built with beautiful code as well, or if its beauty if only skin-deep. Code? Beautiful? Sure. After all, Code is Poetry. This is just HTML, so it can’t be quite as intricate and elegant as a dynamic language, but it still bears the brush strokes of its creator.

It gets me to thinking, what makes beautiful code? In HTML, it comes down to craftsmanship. Let’s take a look at some markup written they way markup should be written and see how beautiful it can be.

Large PNG Original PSD Text of HTML

It’s big enough to print out and tape up inside your locker to impress your friends. Well, it might be a bit of an awkward size. I’ll make the PSD available in case you want to alter it.