Once upon a time, I believed that line breaks had no impact on the rendering of HTML due to minification. However, I recently discovered something peculiar.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<style>
div { width: 200px; background: silver; margin: 30px; display: block!important; }
span { border: 1px solid yellow; display: inline!important; }
</style>
<!-- div1 -->
<div><span>Apple</span><span>Apple</span><span>Apple</span><span>Apple</span><span>Apple</span><span>Apple</span></div>
<!-- div2 -->
<div>
<span>Apple</span>
<span>Apple</span>
<span>Apple</span>
<span>Apple</span>
<span>Apple</span>
<span>Apple</span>
</div>
</body>
</html>Both div1 and div2 are identical except for the fact that one is minified and lacks newlines.
In div2, the spans line up perfectly and wrap as expected for inline elements. However, in div1, this behavior is not observed. Additionally, there seems to be an odd gap between the <span> elements.
https://i.sstatic.net/UNVqE.png
Any insights into why this may be happening?
UPDATE:
Thanks to some helpful comments, I have learned that the reason the spans do not wrap is because they lack spaces and behave like a LONG WORD, similar to:
"lallalalalalallalalalalaalalalalalalalalalalalalallaalalalallallalalalalallalalalalaaaa"
This type of content typically overflows its container rather than wrapping around. I resolved this issue after discovering that word-break: break-word also works on spans.