Re: Cleaning House

On 5/6/07, Tina Holmboe <tina@greytower.co.uk> wrote:

[ Using '<b style="position: absolute ; top: 150px;">' to mean 'header' ]

>   It doesn't matter. It /is/ a real-world example of why the
>   B-element /cannot/ be redefined as being equal to STRONG;
>   the rarity of misuse notwithstanding.

Sure it can.  That page was already broken; in some GUI browsers it
would (and still will) produce a result that many people will see as a
synonym for "header", but (from a prescriptivist standpoint) it wasn't
(and still isn't) a real header.

If the parsing fallbacks were dropped, and b were defined strictly as
a fallback for strong -- it would continue to be prescriptively wrong,
but it would still produce something that many people would see as a
synonym for header, just as they do in printed pages.

-jJ

Received on Sunday, 6 May 2007 16:10:35 UTC