Re: Is the current definition of the article element in HTML useful?

On Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:21:48 +0100, Steve Faulkner  
<faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Chaals,
>
>> Yes. Likewise for search engines (and probably other systems that try  
>> to process web content), people using the article element in this way  
>> is actually helpful.
>
> can you give us some insight on how it would be more useful for a serach  
> engine than using a list to markup comments?
>
> for example:
>
> [...]

<article>

<h1> my blog post</h1>

<p> this is my first post </p>

<article>
<h2> comments</h2>
<p>This is a comment by <a  
href="http://my.yandex.ru/chaals">chaals</a>.</p>
<p>Lists are not as clear, because they can be used in comments. Many  
comments are more than a single paragraph and a lot of comment systems  
allow some basic structured content:</p>
<ul>
<li>Inline formatting
<li>Lists of different types
<li>some linking, images, etc
</ul>
<p>So it is not as simple to figure out where one comment ends and another  
begins as if they were grouped and nested by articles.</p>
<p>Actually this is like a separate comment that might have come from  
someone else. It's true that we are not going to get really fantastic  
markup all the time. Whatever users can do will be riddled with errors,  
even when we make it clear that doing it right gives good SEO (which for  
most users seems to be an even better motivation than actually allowing  
people to use their content).</p>
<p>No comment on the implicit social commentary that the last comment  
implies, of course.</p>
<p>There is some nesting in this set of comments, but using a flat format  
means I would have to shift it to some magic metadata tagging. In the  
public web people seem to think this is less likely to work - and I am  
inclined overall to agree with them. If this were marked up as articles,  
it would be easier to collapse stuff or know when to do so for a  
user...</p>
<p>Admittedly lists can be nested too. But there is no indication whether  
a nested list is within a single conceptual lumpofstuff or is a framework  
delineating one lumpofstuff from a different lumpofstaff.</p>
</article>
</article>

cheers
>
>
>> Skipping the use of article because screenreaders are overly verbose  
>> might be a short-term hack that breaks a long-term benefit, assuming  
>> that screenreaders >>will improve their handling.
>
> This isn't the only issue btw. Another issue is that the set size is not  
> defined/exposed when articles are used where as they are when a list is  
> used.
>
> so there is no clear method for AT to know the start and end of the  
> comments content when marked up using article alone.
> regards
> steveF
>
> On 1 February 2013 11:38, Charles McCathie Nevile  
> <chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:02:13 +0100, Kornel Lesiński  
>> <kornel@geekhood.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:06:29 -0000, Bruce Lawson <brucel@opera.com>  
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is there a reason for any semanric to describe a comment, though?  
>>>> does anyone benefit from
>>>>
>>>> <article>
>>>> <h1>My wonderful Mankini</h1>
>>>> There's only one letter difference between "mankini" and "mankind".
>>>>
>>>> <h2> Two comments</h2>
>>>>
>>>> <article>lol</article>
>>>> <article>u SUK</article>
>>>>
>>>> </article>
>>>>
>>>> over
>>>>
>>>> <article>
>>>> <h1>My wonderful Mankini</h1>
>>>> There's only one letter difference between "mankini" and "mankind".
>>>>
>>>> <h2> Two comments</h2>
>>>>
>>>> <div>lol</div>
>>>> <div>u SUK</div>
>>>>
>>>> </article>
>>>
>>> Goal of applications like Readability, Instapaper, Pocket and Reader  
>>> mode in Safari is to display content of page's main article without  
>>> comments or other >>>distractions.
>>>
>>> Currently these applications use heuristics to achieve that (AFAIK  
>>> things like ratio of text to elements, whitelist/blacklist of class  
>>> names) and I presume that >>>nested <article> could be a useful input  
>>> for such algorithm.
>>
>> Yes. Likewise for search engines (and probably other systems that try  
>> to process web content), people using the article element in this way  
>> is actually helpful.
>>
>> Skipping the use of article because screenreaders are overly verbose  
>> might be a short-term hack that breaks a long-term benefit, assuming  
>> that screenreaders >>will improve their handling.
>>
>> We already know that they usually take a long time to do things like  
>> this (For example header navigation still wasn't in JAWS in 2000 as far  
>> as I could tell, >>despite having been implemented for years in other  
>> systems, and now being one of the most critical functions for users).
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Chaals
>>
>> --Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office,  
>> Yandex
>>      chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com
>>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
chaals@yandex-team.ru Find more at http://yandex.com