Re: Proposal: <content> element

On Aug 17, 2009, at 1:45 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:

> Looking back at the Web Authoring Statistics
>
>  http://code.google.com/webstats/2005-12/classes.html
>
> I think the classes that indicated the need for an <article> in fact  
> indicate the need for another element. Besides having a header and a  
> footer most pages have some kind of element that indicates where the  
> main content of the page is. I think that is what the classes "main"  
> and "content" indicate. WAI-ARIA has a specific role for this  
> purpose as well, "main". Presumably allowing AT to jump directly to  
> the content of a page.
>
> If you consider a typical blog or news site you have a header,  
> sidebar, footer, and a content area. The content area is not a  
> single article, but usually (on the frontpage) consists of the  
> latest ten articles or so. It seems perfectly logical to have some  
> kind of grouping element for these just like many pages already do.
>
> I think that if you do the study again and also include the values  
> of id attributes it will become even more clear, but simply studying  
> templates of some blog engines probably does the trick too.

I agree that an element for the main content would be useful. It seems  
that if you have <nav>, <header>, <footer> and <aside> sections inside  
your body, then it would be better to put the main content in some  
kind of specific element. If that content is not an article (as in the  
case of a web application or a multi-article page such as a blog),  
then it seems a little weak to put the main content in a generic <div>  
or <section>.

Regards,
Maciej