Fwd: Re: Document outline and the wrapper of the main content

Ian Yang wrote: "There can be only one most important thing in a page 
(imo), and that would be the company..."

Surely (imho) the most important "thing" on a page is the "content" the 
user has selected to digest.  The marketing department might argue as 
Ian does however users typically dismiss logos and branding as eye candy 
- or hurdles to overcome for non sighted users.  Ditto navigation, 
advertisements and related content.

As a rule I usually make the first element after the <body> tag the <h1> 
element - the page title.  This is followed by the content/article after 
which any frippery can be appended then positioned with CSS to "appear" 
in the flow of the user agent.

Branding, navigation, asides, search, footers, advertising etc are not 
the most important elements of the document and as such should be 
relegated to their respective position in the reading sequence. Skip 
links are not required making template design easier and it gives users 
what they came here for - the content.

Content is king
Michael Virant


-------- Original Message --------
Subject:  Re: Document outline and the wrapper of the main content
Resent-Date:  Wed, 01 Aug 2012 12:49:32 +0000
Resent-From:  w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Date:  Wed, 1 Aug 2012 20:49:03 +0800
From:  Ian Yang <ian@invigoreight.com>
To:  Ramón Corominas <listas@ramoncorominas.com>
CC:  w3c-wai-ig@w3.org list <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>



On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Ramón Corominas 
<listas@ramoncorominas.com <mailto:listas@ramoncorominas.com>> wrote:

    Indeed, it is correct. Why should the MAIN content be under the
    "branding"?

    Moreover, screen reader users would expect level-1 headings to mark
    the most important contents of the document, which in my opinion can
    be the "branding & navigation" section (understood as "the
    interface") and the "main article" (understood as "the specific
    piece of information this document represents"). And thus, the
    "complementary content" is dependant of -probably- the main content,
    that is, it supplements the main information. According to WebAIM's
    survey, screen reader users have also considered that the "two-h1"
    structure is better than a single-h1 one.

    However, I have not seen that debate of "div instead of article",
    and in fact I think it is wrong to use <div>, although not because
    of the sectioning levels, but because "article" can better represent
    the "individual piece of information", which can then be re-used in
    other parts of the website or other documents. Thus, for me the real
    problem is that using <article> the main heading would be always of
    level-2, which would not convey (in my opinion) its importance.

    Regards,
    Ramón.


Hi Ramón,

The company, or the branding, is the parent of everything. Everything is 
derived from it. Therefore nothing can be at the same level as it and 
the main content should be under it. (in my opinion)

There can be only one most important thing in a page (imo), and that 
would be the company, or the branding. While "two-h1" may be considered 
better by some screen reader users, that's not hierarchically correct. (imo)

The example of HTML5 spec 
<http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/single-page.html#the-nav-element> uses 
<div> as the wrapper of the main content. And Ian Hixie said use <div> 
if a wrapper is a must, too. I have seen some other discussions on the 
internet but can't find them right now.


Sincerely,
Ian Yang

Received on Thursday, 2 August 2012 00:58:32 UTC