Re: aside and figure elements

On Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:44:05 +0100, Laura Carlson  
<laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Bruce,
>
>>> Another question, John, do you find the definitions of aside and
>>> figure too close in meaning? Should the definitions be changed? If so
>>> how? The definitions of the aside and figure sound almost identical,
>>> except that figure has a caption. Do you consider the overlapping
>>> definitions problematic? Developers will tend to confuse the two
>>> elements and use them incorrectly.
>>
>> They're especially similar where figure has no caption.
>>
>> I wrote to the WG on this in July last year
>> http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-July/020710.html
>>
>> Main difference, in such a case, seems to me to be that aside affects
>> document outline, as it's sectioning content, while figure doesn't.
>
> Do you think that the definition in the spec should changed to clarify
> the differences better?

I'm agnostic, tbh. The example I give - of a pullquote - seems to me to be  
neither aside (tangentially related) nor figure (illustrative related  
content). I'm not agitating for a <pullquote> element, simply saying that  
it seems to me to be an edge case for either element.

(I personally think that pullquotes are presentational beasties anyway -  
if they divided up content, they'd be headings. They seem to me to be  
layout devices to break up slabs of text and I often wonder what they  
sound like to a screenreader user as they simply repeat content that's  
already in the content, but not for reasons of emphasis. (Of course, I am  
not a typesetter))

Received on Monday, 7 June 2010 14:27:30 UTC