- From: James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:00:18 +0000
Eugene T.S. Wong wrote: > On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 04:39:29 -0800, Matthew Paul Thomas > <mpt at myrealbox.com> wrote: >> If authors -- or specifications -- try too hard to use a semantic >> element, or to force other people to use it, it will be misused so >> much that UAs can no longer trust the element to have any particular >> meaning, so it will become de facto presentational. > > Yes! That is what I was trying to say earlier. The best case examples > are inline strings which are typically italicized and bolded, but aren't > being emphasized. The problem with using <EM> and <STRONG> in those > situations is that these 2 elements have been stretched to include more > than just emphasis. Accepting mpt's argument for a moment, what is the semantic equivalent of <center> or <big>? Even if we took the argument to your extreme and shadowed every semantic element with a meaningless element with the same default presentation in some reference graphical browser, there's no place for <center>. I suppose <big> is a bit like <h1> but surely we could just reintroduce <font> and be done with it? But you can't be suggesting that sites which employ the <font> tag are superior to ones that use CSS? I mean, they load slower, usually use <font> tags instead of headings, which reduces the readability and accessibility of the page and generally have a negative impact. Whilst it is not implausible that a few select presentational elements may improve the overall correct use of meaningful elements on the web, history suggests that providing a raft of graphical presentational elements at the markup-language level encourages the use of poor-quality markup. -- "It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
Received on Tuesday, 17 January 2006 11:00:18 UTC