Re: [html] Semantics of "aside", "header", and "footer"

Andrew Fedoniouk wrote:
> footer { position: fixed; top:0; }
> 
> Is it still footer or is it header now?

That exactly “made me wonder”.


Robert Burns wrote:
> My view is that simply changing the names of the elements cannot —  
> alone — change them into non-presentational elements. More  
> importantly, I think we need to think about the semantic contents of  
> these parts of the page more systematically.

Agreed, and I didn't intend to “change their names” anyway. It looks like a desirable “semantics update”, too.


Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> I disagree that they are presentational. Headers, footers and asides  
> are identifiable parts of web documents and indeed non-web documents  
> just as much as paragraphs and sections are. Furthermore, it is hard  
> to see how they are any more presentational than <tfoot>, <thead>,  
> <h1> or <th>.

Obviously, “thead” and “tfoot” play in the same league, but their existence since HTML 4 is certainly a “bonus” […].


Apart from the already mentioned issues, I begin anticipating scenarios like “aside-itis” (the potential “div-ebola” successor) and endless “header” and “footer” discussions (like “a logo placed in the top-left corner must (not) be placed within `header´” wars). Different element names  with adjusted semantics might reduce or prevent that.

-- 
Jens Meiert
http://meiert.com/en/

Received on Friday, 7 September 2007 11:33:19 UTC