Re: HTML5 feedback from prominent designers

Lachlan Hunt writes:

> Smylers wrote:
> 
> > James Graham writes:
> > 
> > > something designed to strip away all the extraneous material from
> > > a page whilst leaving the content ... would want to remove
> > > sidebars whilst leaving pullouts (although possibly rearraging
> > > them).
>
> Could you clarify the use case for doing that?

Saving paper: wanting to print the useful parts of a webpage, without
unnecessary clutter -- which can often push the main content into very
narrow columns, spanning multiple sheets.

> > That's a good point.  Is it an argument for<main>?  An<aside>
> > _inside_ <main>  could be kept, whereas one _parallel_ to<main>
> > wouldn't?
>
> No.  An <aside> inside an <article> or other <section> is already easy  
> to distinguish from one that is only within the <body>.

Of course, for pages where it's appropriate to use <article> or
<section>.  I thought the recent push for <main> (or <content> or
whatever) came from wanting an element to use for the main content of
pages which _aren't_ articles or sections?

I believe the counter-argument was that <body> is sufficient for such
content -- that is, the main content is what's left after <header> and
<footer> have been removed.

But <aside> makes that awkward: some of them likely count as main
content and some not.

For example, consider the front page of a news site on which the main
content is a list of headlines, linking to articles on other pages.  The
main flow presents these in reverse chronological order, but there are
some boxes calling out features or recent big stories.  That lot
together is the page's main content (what a user visiting that page came
to see) but is neither an article nor a section.

But the page also has other site-wide content in columns down the side,
for example adverts, a search box, and contact information.

If the main content is directly in <body> and if <aside> is used for
both the main content call-out boxes and for the site-wide page
furniture, then it isn't possible to distinguish the two.

Smylers

Received on Wednesday, 2 September 2009 14:37:45 UTC