Is applying styles to <form> element a good practice? [closed]

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Applying styles to <form> tag is:

a) a good practice, it decreases the count of elements on a page and makes code clear

b) a bad practice because of semantics, use other elements instead, div is for style, form is for forms

c) don't ask silly questions and focus on real job!

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d) none of the above

Style the form if that makes life easier for you. It is not against semantics if you do it.

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a - Decreasing the amount of elements is not necessarily a good practice. If creating more elements will make your layout more readable/understandable then go ahead.

b - Divs are not for styling, they are there to divide sections in the document

c - You should worry about semantics. This is not a silly question.

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a) Yes.

b) No. Div is a generic element. It is not for "style" it is for "when nothing else describes the semantics".

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A and C. Simple way checking for good answer is: Write a code and validate it with validator.

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Since semantics are seperate from style, applying style to a form has no semantic consequences. Go right ahead and style a form if you like, it makes no difference to the semantic meaning of the page.

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In my personal experience, (a) is especially true because:

• You will be reducing the overall filesize of your page, with no real disadvantage (especially if you have multiple forms and run into this a lot).
• You will be reducing the amount of confusion when you have to go back to edit this style in the future (where someone may have the same question as you).
• You will be reducing the ambiguity as to where certain styles come from (e.g. this form has too large of a top margin. Is that coming from the margin on the <div> or the margin on the <form>?)
• You will be reducing the possibility of introducing bugs or cross-browser quirks, stemming from browsers not implementing the same default styles on all elements (in this case, the <form> element).

While I suppose one could argue that (b) is a "problem" in theory (and should therefore be avoided), it will never be a "problem" in practice. But as you can see above, wrapping it in a <div> can certainly be a problem in practice.