Fw: HTML Headings and Making tThem Not Impact Surrounding Information

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jerry Weichbrodt" <gerald.g.weichbrodt@ived.gm.com>
To: <basr-l@trace.wisc.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 10:37 AM
Subject: HTML Headings and Making tThem Not Impact Surrounding Information


Hi all.  This is sort of a how-to question.  I hope it's not off-topic.

I have been trying to talk our local IT folks into using true HTML headings
as a means of labeling sections of their web pages because of the support
that screen readers and some other browsing devices give to using headings
as sort of an outline for the page.

Standard equipment on most computers around here is Internet Explorer 6.
Most others are slightly earlier versions of IE and perhaps some Netscape
4.7 and the like.

My understanding is that you should be able to use cascading stylesheets to
tailor the text size and such for headings, thus removing the argument that
the default type is too large and such.  However, I understand that, at
least in Internet Explorer, even if you've adjusted the type size to your
liking, IE makes some assumptions about the layout of text around the
headings, and it likes to leave extra space below the text that has been
marked up as a heading.  The developers say that this extra space messes up
their page layout, so they are reluctant to implement use of true headings
even though they appreciate the value to a few of us of such headings.

My question is, is there a way to get tighter control of headings so that
they really can be used to demarcate information that is meant to be a
heading without imposing restrictions on the layout around them? I would
love to come up with a suggestion that would make all of us happy.

Thanks,
Jerry Weichbrodt

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Received on Friday, 29 August 2003 11:30:58 UTC