Re: Breaking out Headers, Footers and Navigation

> Stylesheets have absolutely nothing to do with semantics like this.

That's true, but what I was saying was that the right way to provide
a lot of the information that goes into headers and footers is as
link elements or meta references.  E.g. having copyright notices
in the main content serves only a legal purpose and doesn't help
normal readers; the legal requirement would be met if the browser
provided access to the copyright information - in Windows user 
interface terms, this is generally provided in the Help | About
box, so it doesn't seem as though there is pressure to have it 
constantly visible.  Proper browser supports for links to a navigation
page would have made frames unnecessary.

Moreover, what I was also saying is that, if browsers haven't provided
explicit support for similar features, they are unlikely to do so
for new ones, so the only way that the average author will get these
features actioned by a browser is by providing a style sheet.  As they
can provide a style sheet, it means that the addition of such a feature
isn't completely hostage to browsers.

I think I was also suggesting that having most of this material displayed
in the main window is actually a styling issue.

Footers, in particular, are there for metadata an links that the authors
feel obliged to include but want to hide as much as possible, consistent
with still making them available for viewing on all browsers, e.g. 
copyright notices, and site map links (they are there to meet accessibility
requirments and/or because they are afraid that search engines won't
follow the same link as a link element).  Grouping this information into
a footer is a pure styling issue.  There is a large element of styling
in the choice of what goes into a header, as well.

Received on Monday, 19 April 2004 02:34:58 UTC