Re: The History of <aside> for sidebars

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Aryeh Gregor<Simetrical+w3c@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Using the same colloquial definition, a *website's*
>> header/footer/sidebar area contains nearly exactly the same sort of
>> stuff.  There's very few things that can't be reasonably be put in two
>> of them, or quite often in all three.
>
> But most of the reason that those three elements exist in the first
> place is to replace three of the most common CSS classes, AFAICT, so
> it would rather defeat the point to make them all one element that
> would have to be classed anyway.  They're defined so vaguely that I
> doubt they'd be of any help to AT.

I agree.  I was trying originally to respond to suggestions that the
contents are semantically different when the elements are used as page
structure (for example, I recall a suggestion that sidebars are really
<header>s).  I think drawing such semantic distinctions is incorrect -
they're all identical in this context (<header> has a slight
advantage, as mentioned before, in that it is for site headings which
usually won't appear in the other two).  So there's no use arguing
over which is 'most appropriate' in a given situation - just use them
naturally, and you'll be good enough, since they were drawn from
natural use anyway.

~TJ

Received on Friday, 4 September 2009 23:43:05 UTC