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Posted by Jose on 02/13/06 00:04
> Use the proper elements for the content you want to serve out to your visitor. So a paragraph is a paragraph. A header is a header, a list is a list, a table is a table, an abbreviation is an abbreviation.
As a philosophy, I agree. But it doesn't always quite fit. Computers
are like that. For example, I have a heading ("Seven pictures of
Atlas") and the material for which this is a heading are in fact, seven
..jpgs. But I want to have, under the heading, "compare these to Baal".
Why under? Because the subheading (I'll call it that for now) is
subservient to and relates to the heading (or rather, to the material as
a whole, which is embodied in the heading). The pictures are not
subservient to the subheading, they are subservient to the heading. So,
what I'm calling a subheading is not really a subheading, it's a
something-else (for which there probably isn't an appropriate tag).
Human readers would get it perfectly if the putative subheading were in
smaller type, below the heading with no fuss.
I can do that easily if I skip the heading stuff, and just specify both
heading and subheading as "body text", centered, with "bigger" and "not
so much bigger" as type sizes. This tells humans what it is (by virtue
of the style), but doesn't tell the browser what it is.
Or, I can apply some styling to the header. This is closer to ideal,
since at least we can call a heading a heading, but we are then =still=
using style to convey meaning (which is supposed to be what CSS is
trying to outlaw).
It just isn't always the case that you can tell the browser what a thing
is, because the browser just doesn't have a big enough vocabulary.
Computers have square holes, and pegs come in all sorts of shapes,
sizes, and textures.
Jose
--
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