Re: Use of the <h1> element

XHTML markup applies to the web document. A book as a web document has
H1 for book title, H2 for chapters, etc.

If you also have the chapters presented separately in web documents of
their own, the chapter heading now becomes H1, sub headings H2, etc.

Ideally a book should be stored as a nested XML structure where headings
are just headings (H) never spelled out in H1, H2, H3, etc. The headings
become level 1, 2 or 3 depending on placement in the hierarchy, count of
parents. In this way you can at any time copy a sub structure out of the
nested structure or use different nested structures together, and H1,
H2, H3, etc., automatically turns up right after the transformation to
XHTML.

In our multimedia age even streaming media could be part of a heading or
the heading. The question is only: does it work or not. 

Homepages are often so removed from the original concept of a document
that they very often are a terrible mess to get right when it comes to
structural markup. Since a natural choice for H1 is often missing on the
homepage, one is forced to use the company logo, the tag line, or the
menu item "home", which should not be an active link to it self. H1 at
homepages is often so complicated that you need a lot of CSS wizardry to
get it some what right, and almost never perfect, like using H1 inline,
etc.

Best regards,
Jesper Tverskov
www.smackthemouse.com

Received on Wednesday, 12 May 2004 04:30:17 UTC