- From: Ben Schwarz <ben.schwarz@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 09:11:50 +1100
- To: whatwg@lists.whatwg.org
In response to Silvia's comments— I think relying on <xxx role=""> is a pretty good result, I think we need to stretch further. An <article> is a piece of content that isn't semantically defined on its parents. (right?) Shouldn't we have a way to define this without confusing the "main" content of the 'page'? On 08/11/2012, at 8:07 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 3:00 AM, Markus Ernst <derernst@gmx.ch> wrote: > >> Am 07.11.2012 15:48 schrieb Jukka K. Korpela: >> >> I suppose that the heuristics would include recognizing a <div> element >>> to which class "main" has been assigned. Then one could argue that >>> <main> is not needed, as authors can keep using <div class="main">, as >>> millions of pages use. >>> >> >> I doubt that this is useable for that kind of heuristics anyway - as there >> is no standard for this, "main" as a class name may indicate the main >> contents, but also a main container to center the whole page. Also, >> non-english speaking coders may use their own language words as id or class >> names. >> > > Agreed. > > Looking at existing uses of <div class="main"> to analyse whether we need a > <main> element really doesn't make sense to me. I firmly believe that > class="main" is mostly used for CSS purposes and not for semantic (and thus > accessibility) purposes. > > Instead, we should be looking at pages that use <xxx role=main> or more > traditionally in older Web pages use a "skip to main" link as the use cases > for a <main> element. Sometimes that may co-incide with <div class="main">, > but not in general. > > Therefore, I don't actually think that the introduction in Steve's > document is making a good case for the existence of the element with this > sentence: > "The main element formalises the common > practice<https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-extensions/raw-file/tip/maincontent/index.html#common>of > identification of the main content section of a document using the > id values such as 'content' and 'main'." > > I'd suggest explaining that there is currently no explicit means of > identifying with 100% accuracy what part of a Web page is the single most > important part. Instead we have a solution only for accessibility purposes > with the @role="main" ARIA attribute, or more traditionally by providing a > "skip to main" link on the top of the page. If there was a <main> element > that semantically identified the important part of a Web page, that would > improve accessibility, but also enable for example search engines to give > that part of a Web page a higher importance. > > On that latter part: I am always annoyed when a search engine gives me > links to a particular topic that I was searching for which is only > mentioned in a side bar as some related information. It would be possible > to exclude such content if there was a <main> element. The argument that > <article> and <aside> etc. will do away with such problems relies on > authors actually making use of these elements. I am yet to see that happen > - in fact I have seen people that started using these elements go away from > them again, since they don't seem to have any obvious advantage. <main> on > the other hand has a very real advantage - immediately for accessibility - > and its easier to put a single <main> element on a page than to introduce a > whole swag of new elements. It's the simplicity of that single element that > will make it immediately usable by everyone, will reduce the probability of > authoring error, and thus make it reliable for search engines and other > semantic uses. > > Regards, > Silvia.
Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2012 22:14:00 UTC