Re: Bug 7034

Anne van Kesteren, Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:37:15 +0100:
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:33:31 +0100, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>> On Mar 24, 2010, at 3:29 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>>> 
>>> Also, do we really still need to have arguments over why
>>> transitional doctypes are bad (they trigger an inferior rendering
>>> mode for one) and why presentational markup is to be avoided?
>> 
>> I think I understand the value of avoiding quirks mode and almost
>> standards mode, enough to explain it. I'm not sure I understand fully
>> why presentational markup is to be avoided. Can you provide some
>> reasons or point to a good reference?
>> 
>> I ask because I'm planning to make a wiki page that collects
>> rationales for authoring conformance requirements.
> 
> Ian posted about this a while back:
> 
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Oct/0961.html

The poster child of "un-semantic markup", also in Ian's letter, is the 
font element, which of course is a questionable element.  It is also 
the presentational element that I care least about. Ian also had these 
points:

>  - poor accessibility for users of other media
>  - high maintenance cost
>  - high file sizes
>  - minimal file reuse, leading to poor caching

I disagree that <font> needs to create to poor accessibility. This 
depends entirely on the coding style. On the contrary, Google uses 
legacy features to make sure that pages are accessible on a larger set 
of user agents. I guess Google also care about caching ... 

When it comes to maintenance and file size, then I think I have seen in 
your blog, Anne, positive nods to people that picked elements that was 
shorter ... At any rate, I don't see that <strike>txt</strike> takes up 
more bytes than e.g. <span 
style="text-decoration:line-through">txt</span>. <strike> is more 
specific than <span>. Which is a good thing, and also makes it "more 
semantic", so to speak.
-- 
leif halvard silli

Received on Wednesday, 24 March 2010 22:04:34 UTC