csshtml
Given
<div>
<textarea></textarea>
</div>
Why is this
<div>
<textarea class="width90"></textarea>
</div>
.width90{
width:90%;
}
any better than this?
<div>
<textarea style="width:90%;"></textarea>
</div>
edit:
I updated my example better. My question should be more related to generic styles like widths, text align, etc.
Best Practice is to avoid using in-line styles where possible so Yes I would suggest you use the class="hidden"
Check out this link for more information on best practices with inline styles vs external: http://webdesign.about.com/od/css/a/aa073106.htm
There is, it's called <input>.
The <input> tag came first. But then came the desire to group inputs (and typically the radio button variety in particular) into visually-distinct groups. Names like <inputgroup> or <inputset> just wouldn't fly. But <fieldset> sounds pretty good, so that's the name they used.
<input> wasn't renamed to <field> for consistency because that would break all sorts of stuff. And honestly is that sort of consistency really necessary? This is HTML, after all.
FWIW, <legend> was introduced at the same time to complete the visual experience. Combining the two allowed you to draw a box with a label around the form like this:
It's like Windows 95 all over again. This was a level of UI sophistication previously only available in such fine development environments as Visual Basic 5.0. Bringing that sort of design capability to HTML was a big deal.
Best Answer
Looking at your updated question,
My answer is It's not any better, and neither would pass a code review with me.
As noted in the comments, if you wanted to change the width from 90% to 85%, you'd still have to make changes in many places.
It would be far better to give your
<textarea>tag a semantically meaningful class name such as 'InvoiceDescription', 'container', 'col-md-1', and so on. That way when someone later on wants to both change the width AND the font/background color/whatever, they can do it in one place.