[Bug 12292] New: Use of <teaser> or similar construct for a reference to an external article.

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12292

           Summary: Use of <teaser> or similar construct for a reference
                    to an external article.
           Product: HTML WG
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson)
        AssignedTo: ian@hixie.ch
        ReportedBy: kurt.cagle@gmail.com
         QAContact: public-html-bugzilla@w3.org
                CC: mike@w3.org, public-html-wg-issue-tracking@w3.org,
                    public-html@w3.org


I am working on a book on HTML5 web graphics - primarily CSS, SVG and Canvas at
this stage, for O'Reilly Publishing, and am focusing at the moment on the
various new elements being added for their impact upon both HTML structure and
CSS.

In doing so, it occurred to me that there's a conceptual element that's missing
in the model that could prove very useful to add. I was looking specifically at
the <article> element; the HTML5 specification implies that an article is much
like an Atom <entry> , yet realistically an <article> is a complete narrative
node while an entry is rather a bundle of metadata that may possibly provide
narrative content but is most important for its linkages. 

Put another way, let's say you had a "front page" on a site that contained
teasers to complete articles within the site. I'd argue that these entries
would by the definition of sectional elements be contained within a <nav>
structure, and that rather than being given as articles a new element, perhaps
<teaser>, would be better here. In this way, a news site would have a general
structure that might look like:

<body>
     <header>
          <h1>My News Site</h1>
     </header>
     <nav>
         <teaser>
               <header>
                      <h1><a href="url1">Cool Article 1</a></h1>
               </header>
               <p>Lorem Ipsum ...</p>
         </teaser>
         <teaser>
               <header>
                      <h1><a href="url1">Cool Article 2</a></h1>
               </header>
               <p>Lorem Ipsum ...</p>
         </teaser>
         <teaser>
               <header>
                      <h1><a href="url1">Cool Article 3</a></h1>
               </header>
               <p>Lorem Ipsum ...</p>
         </teaser>
    </nav>
    <footer>
         <p>Copyright 2011 me</p>
    </footer>
</body>       

This would hold regardless of whether this was rendered as a search results
page, a front page, or similar kind of entity, and implies that the entry in
question is in fact a reference to an external article rather than the article
itself.

This even makes sense in the context of a page with existing article content.
The existing listing implies that you could nest articles, where subordinate
nested articles are links, but again this really doesn't square with the
concept of the article as being a narrative whole. Rather, if you treat a list
of related links to an article as a set of teasers in a nav within an article,
then the structure begins to make sense:

<body>
     <header>
          <h1>My News Site</h1>
     </header>
     <article>
     <header>
            <h1>Cool Article</h1>
     </header>
     <p>Lorem Ispum ...</p>  
     <nav>
         <header>
             <h1>Related articles:</h1>
         </header>
         <teaser>
               <header>
                      <h1><a href="url1">Cool Article 2</a></h1>
               </header>
               <p>Lorem Ipsum ...</p>
         </teaser>
         <teaser>
               <header>
                      <h1><a href="url1">Cool Article 3</a></h1>
               </header>
               <p>Lorem Ipsum ...</p>
         </teaser>
    </nav>
    </article>
    <footer>
         <p>Copyright 2011 me</p>
    </footer>
</body>       

Not only is it conceptually clearer, but it also makes CSS constructs more
legible:

article h1 {font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:18pt;}
article teaser h1 {font-size:12pt;}

rather than the potentially problematic:

article article h1 {font-size:12pt;}

I would recommend teaser or something similar over section because sections 1)
are recursive, and 2) similarly imply narrative cohesiveness rather than
relational linkages. Moreover, while teasers are analogous to list items (li),
I'd argue that li is typically used for lists of teasers or similar constructs
because there is no analog in HTML for a teaser, and lists in turn have
expected default markup that teasers may not necessarily have.

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Received on Sunday, 13 March 2011 01:48:11 UTC