Re: using strong to indicate a title?

Steve Faulkner, Tue, 7 May 2013 15:08:05 +0100:
> well no it {note: <small>} wasn't which is why it was binned.
> 
> the circumstance is where you have a title/subtitle that you want to
> include in the 'outline' but the subtitle does not start a new
> section/subsection

Short answer: 

(1) <small> should be fine, of above use case. But (2) why not simply 
recommend to use <br> for this use case?

Longer answer:

I scanned the discussion last month about <small> - and I could not 
find any discussion of outline there. But if the <strong> proposal 
implies

   <h1>Main.</h1><p>Sub.</p>

when one doesn’t want it in the outline, but

   <h1><strong>Main.</strong> Sub.</h1>

when one does want it in the outline, then, for *that* use case, 
<small>Sub.</small> seems better than <strong>Main.</strong>, because:

1) it has intuitive CSS - getting the CSS right using <strong>,
   would be lots of (unintuitive) work, whereas <small> is simple
   to style, though usually not require any CSS
2) we are after demoting the subtitle part - and the role of
   <small> is to demote. 
3) with regard to the outline, it has the same effect as
   <strong>.
4) the semantic change would also be more involved if we went
   for <strong>Main</strong> as it would require both a a 
   change to <strong>, when <strong> occurs inside <hx/>, and
   a change of <hx> when <strong> is a child.

However, for the use case when the outline should contain the subtitle, 
the <br/> element ought to be possible as well. Currently spec says:[1]

]]br elements must be used only for line breaks that are actually part 
of the content, as in poems or addresses.[[

And it seem to me we could just add ”or subdivided headings” in the 
last part, after the comma. We could the leave it up to authors to 
style subtitles using the elements that suites them (even using 
<small>  - if we clarifies that <small> can be used for that).

[1] 
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/text-level-semantics.html#the-br-element


Leif Halvard Silli


> SteveF
> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
> 
> 
> On 7 May 2013 15:02, Christopher Healey <deezignink@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> hgroup was perfect for just this circumstance.
>> 
>> -Christopher
>> 
>> 
>> On May 7, 2013, at 9:58 PM, Mallory van Achterberg <
>> stommepoes@stommepoes.nl> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 09:52:09AM -0400, Denis Boudreau wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> 
>>>> I do like Steve's proposal using an existing element in h1 to create
>> some sort of a hierarchy. But I must admit that the first thing that came
>> to mind when reading Steve's proposal for <strong>, I wondered why the
>> proposal wasn't for <small>. So depending on whether you want the smaller
>> heading above or below the larger one, we could do either of the following:
>>>> 
>>>> <h1>
>>>> <small>Breaking News</small>
>>>> Steve Faulkner had this crazy idea!
>>>> </h1>
>>>> 
>>>> <h1>
>>>> Breaking News
>>>> <small>Steve Faulkner had this crazy idea!</small>
>>>> </h1>
>>>> 
>>>> /Denis
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Of the two, I like the second one better. Small has always meant
>>> "sub" in my mind, read out loud differently like legal text and
>>> under-the-breath mutters. First example makes much less sense, since
>>> if you just want a styling sandbag, span makes more sense.
>>> 
>>> -Mallory
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>>

Received on Tuesday, 7 May 2013 15:22:06 UTC