Re: should HTML have a <heading> element?

| And use both versions <h1>, <h2> and <heading> in the same HTML file is 
more complicated to understand.
| The attribute will permite define the level of heading without use a 
<section> element.

To be clear, that has *always* been the case. Level of heading has never 
needed a <section> element (which was just introduced in HTML5) to be 
defined. Headings have always clearly implied the semantic structure. The 
difficulty was not lack of hierarchical definition, but how to integrate two 
or more very different kinds of thing in a document. This is why we ended up 
with explicit tags for <header>, <section>, and <aside>.

But so far as hierarchy within one kind of content on a page goes, headings 
have never been problematic. A new heading always implies a new section or 
subsection, and one level higher numerically is always nested within the 
level one level lower. I.e. an h4 is always within the section created by 
the preceding h3, that h3 is always within the section created by the 
preceding h2, and so on. This structure in itself has never needed a 
<section> element. The questions have arisen more with how to be semantic 
with things that do not belong to the main content, but still require 
hierarchy.

Tim Gallant
http://timgallantcreative.com

Received on Friday, 9 May 2014 14:35:31 UTC