Since FriendFeed’s launch of a new still-in-beta redesign, there’s been much debate over some of the features and style changes – both on blogs, and within the service itself. While any change is sometimes met with reluctance and skepticism, as Facebook has realized with their latest changes, there’s a number of reasons why the aesthetic and functional revamps of FriendFeed are helpful for both its users, and for the proliferation of real-time data on the web. Here’s a breakdown of why I believe FriendFeed has made a lot of correct choices in their transition from data aggregation, to a broad conversational hub for the web.

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I recently started a Twitter discussion with Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks on the relevance and usefulness of the <small></small> tag. I’ve had this same debate with co-workers on why one would still use <small></small> over just using a <p></p> or <span></span> with an appropriate <class></class> or <id></id> to define the “smallness” of the tag. The one thing we both noticed is that no one uses the <big></big> tag anymore, so why should anyone use the <small> </small> tag? This seems to be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to determining which element to use for an intended result. Let’s look at a few more instances of controversy in the realm of standards and semantics on the web.

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