Portal markup convergence

[Antranig Basman]

I have spent the weekend trying to put together an experimental RSF
(IKAT) rendering for Charon, and wanted to ask some of the markup
experts about some of the patterns I found there. 
Two patterns that were fairly common were:

i) Use of transparent gif as a holder for alt text - generally looks
like this:
 <a href="${toolPlacement.toolResetActionUrl}"  
target="${toolPlacement.toolPlacementIDJS}" title="${rloader.sit_reset}">
  <img src="/library/image/transparent.gif" alt="${rloader.sit_reset}" border="1" />
</a>

Sometimes the img border is 0 rather than 1. 
I'm guessing this is because we want the ability to keep the actual
image in CSS and out of the portal markup? Or is there another reason?

ii) Including some link text for a link within an extra <span>
rather than directly in the element, e.g.:

<li class="selectedTab"><a href="#"><span>${site.siteTitle}</span></a></li>

One of these is specifically commented

## note: keep all the tags in this block in the same line 
<a href="${pwd.siteUrl}" title="${pwd.siteTitle}"><span>${pwd.siteTitle}</span></a>

What happens if we leave the <span> out?


A final issue - there are lots of hardcoded ids in the portal markup, and
it is not clear which ones are vital. I can see a fair set of them being
referenced in portal.css, but not all - e.g. headerMax, headerMin. Is there
a full list somewhere of which of these ids are "official" and need
preserving? Just hoping to save some work for myself :)

Cheers,
A.