Re: HTML5 feedback from prominent designers

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 6:09 PM, Jonas Sicking<jonas@sicking.cc> wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Tab Atkins Jr.<jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> So, I'm now fine with <aside> being used in that way.  However, the
>>> current spec text is entirely inadequate, as it requires one to make
>>> that generalization step, which is often a *bad* move (it's precisely
>>> the sort of thing you'll do when you start, and get trained out of
>>> when you learn a bit more).  I propose adding a third example
>>> explicitly illustrating that this is okay, like the following:
>> Unfortunately very few people read the spec. So if something is hard
>> to understand adding text to the spec is unlikely to help.
> 
> In this case we're okay, since it's only by reading the spec that I
> came to the wrong conclusion.  ^_^  I, and many other people,
> immediately assume that <aside> *is* appropriate for sidebars when we
> see its name.  I just want to make sure that reading the spec doesn't
> disabuse anyone of that correct notion, like it obviously has.

Hmm, possibly I'm weird because there is no way that I get from the term 
"aside" to "sidebar". I would really be interested to know how you make 
that connection because (apart from the obvious fact that "side" is a 
substring of both words) I honestly don't see it. Indeed I assumed for a 
long time that <aisde> mean "pullout" rather than "sidebar" even though 
I must have been involved with discussions where it was mentioned that 
it could be used for a sidebar.

I am still unconvinced the semantic or UA-behaviour overlap between the 
two cases (sidebar vs pullout) is great enough that a single element for 
both makes sense.

Received on Friday, 4 September 2009 07:23:10 UTC