Re: Arguments for Use of Legitimate Heading Tags

Jerry,

As someone who is also a tech author, I find this *very* depressing. I hope
it isn't really true that hardly anyone uses headings - in my acquaintance,
this seems not to be true on the whole, but perhaps I am fortunate in my
colleagues?

Using headings (and other elements) properly to reflect the structure of a
document has been something I do as second nature (whether
writing for the web, in Word, or whatever) - but I guess many web designers
(and Word document authors) are more concerned by the surface appearance
than the semantic nature of the info they are publishing. And it is in
providing a way to get to the structure and semantics that headings are
key - you have several examples of how this might be used in other posts.

Anyway, with styles, it is a doddle to use headings instead of spans -
hardly the huge leap that your developer suggests. Redo the style sheet(s),
then you can use a global search and replace for static pages, or redo the
templates for a CMS. Of course, if span styles were not used consistently,
then you are in trouble - but that suggests design problems that need to be
addressed anyway.

Lois Wakeman

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http://siteusability.com
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Received on Monday, 12 May 2003 08:50:24 UTC