[Bug 12154] b and strong are font-weight: bolder in implementations, not font-weight: bold

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12154

--- Comment #6 from Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3cbug@gmail.com> 2011-06-05 18:41:35 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #5)
> I believe the nested bold is in fact the right behavior.  The only problem
> right now is that it's not well-supported in browsers yet, but that's changing.

See my comment on the Mozilla bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=589124#c21

I have three problems with using font-weight: bolder here:

1) My understanding is not all fonts support multiple levels of bold, so
font-weight 700, 800, and 900 all look the same in that font.  (Am I wrong?) 
Then even if browsers support font-weight: bolder properly, one user will see
<b><b>foo</b>bar</b> as being all one weight, and another will see it as being
two different weights, depending on which font is being used.  So authors on
systems where they look the same will nest <b> tags and not notice, and then
their site will look strange for users on systems where they look different. 
Or vice versa.

This might not be a big issue if commonly-used fonts all support multiple
levels of bold, and browsers are all moving to support that.  Do they, and are
they?

2) Historically, browsers didn't actually display nested bold as bolder than
single bold, so you're going to see site compat bugs like the Mozilla bug
linked to above.  I don't know if the compat bugs are going to be big enough to
be a serious problem, though.  Is this the default behavior in any browser? 
<b><b>foo</b>bar</b> displays as all one weight for me on Firefox 5.0a2, Chrome
13 dev, and Opera 11.11 on Linux; and on IE9 and Firefox 4.0 on Windows 7. 
(Direct2D/DirectWrite are not enabled for Firefox according to about:support.)

3) I'm not convinced nested <b> tags really means the author meant it to be
extra-bold.  It could just as well be a simple mistake, as in the case of Gmail
in the Mozilla bug.  Most people aren't even aware there are more than two font
weights available, and are happy with just one.  It will better match author
expectations if the basic easy-to-use HTML features like <b> only support two
font weights, just like word processors do (at least in their basic options). 
People who really want more weights can access them manually using CSS.

-- 
Configure bugmail: http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.

Received on Sunday, 5 June 2011 18:41:38 UTC