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XHTML Basics - DIV or SPAN? DIV vs SPAN

These two tags are often used inter-changeably by developers for different reasons, so what are the differences between them? How should they be used to markup web pages?

The basic difference between the two is their default behaviour. DIV tags are block-level tags and can be used as containers for other tags. SPAN tags are inline tags and should only contain content. These default behaviours can of course be altered by CSS definitions, but are default in any browser context.

As a reference, if you want to align text within these tags use the following CSS attributes;

DIV - text-align: left|right|center|justify

SPAN - float: left|right

DIV tags are also used to define logical divisions of page content. It also allows CSS to be defined for whole sections of HTML. By applying an id to a DIV you can also add controls using JavaScript.

A SPAN tag is not intended to container other tags, but rather to allow localised styling. This is especially useful when combined with classes. It has even been suggested that future semantic web models will use such markup to define relevant content.