Re: class attribute deprecated with <span>?

Sharon_Correll@sil.org wrote:
> 
> This is the 4th edition of _HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide_, by Chuck
> Musiciano and Bill Kennedy, page 300 (Chapter 8: Cascading Style Sheets,
> section 8.5, last paragraph). It says:

There are multiple errors in this paragraph.

> Although deprecated, the <span> tag also supports the standard tag

Is most definitely not depricated!

> attributes. The style and class attributes, of course, let you control the
> display style

In precise but true.

> the id and title tag attributes let you uniquely label its
> contents

The ID attribute does indeed uniquely label the elements (not contents)
The
TITLE attribute however does _NOT_ label it uniquely, it meant to
provide
a method of describing the function of an element.
I.e. <A title="Go to main index" href="/index/"></A>

> the dir and lang attributes let you specify its native language;

A somewhat equivocal way to put it but gets the basic meaning.

> and the many on-event attributes let you react to user-initiated mouse and
> keyboard actions on the contents.

In precise, true for most, but i.e. not for on-load.

> Not all are implemented by the currently
> popular browsers for this tag or for many others.
>
> Okay, maybe that's not saying the use of style and class are deprecated
> with <span>, but if not, I don't know what it's saying!

What its says is allmost the same in spirit. And therefore highly
errorous.
It has the potentional to even more cloud the understanding of HTML and
accessibility issues even more. ost reads of the book will take this as
as being true, and encouraging them to mis-use HTML, because they -- by
standards of the book -- you may not use span to provide sementic and
accessible HTML if the semantics are not provided for exactly the thing
you're doing.

Christian

Received on Monday, 10 February 2003 10:48:03 UTC