- From: Liam Quinn <liam@htmlhelp.com>
- Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 08:55:59 -0500
- To: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
At 10:04 AM 03/03/98 +0100, Daniel Dardailler wrote: > >> B, BASEFONT, BIG, CENTER, FONT, FRAME, FRAMESET, HR, I, IFRAME, IMG, PRE, >> S, SMALL, STRIKE, SUB, SUP, TT, U. > >I disagree HR is in the set. HR is a structural element to me, which I >can decorated in CSS and specialize using its class or title. > >FRAME stuff is also special, and separated in their own DTD. > >IMG ? you mean vs. OBJECT ? It's not presentation, and not even >deprecated (APPLET is). I tried to give a complete list of presentational elements, knowing that some in the list could be used structurally despite their inherent presentational nature. HR can be used to mean START-OR-END-OF-SECTION, but at its basic level it's just a "horizontal rule"--pure presentation. FRAME can be used as a weak <LINK REL="some relationship"> element, but frames were intended from the beginning as a way to carve up a windowed display and that's how they're used by the vast majority of authors. I put IMG on the list since its primary purpose is to provide a graphic; alternate text for the IMG was clearly an afterthought from the start (unlike OBJECT). For what it's worth, IMG was my last addition to the list, and the one I thought about the most. But when people (and the WAI-GL Working Draft) recommend ALT text like "XYZ Logo", it becomes clear just how presentational IMG is. A lot of presentational elements could have structural purposes if one looks hard enough. SMALL makes a good DE-EMPHASIS element. I sometimes use the I element, along with an appropriate LANG or CLASS attribute, where HTML has no suitable structural element. STRIKE is useful in combination with DEL since so few browsers support the latter. In the future these could be replaced by SPAN or DIV plus style sheets, but there are still a lot of old browsers out there that can be conveyed some (weak) structural information through SMALL, I, B, and friends, but that are shut out by style sheets. -- Liam Quinn Web Design Group Enhanced Designs, Web Site Development http://www.htmlhelp.com/ http://enhanced-designs.com/
Received on Tuesday, 3 March 1998 08:54:17 UTC