Re: 1 webpage != 1 document

Bronwyn Boltwood wrote:
> Over on the pmwiki-users mailing list, we're having a discussion about
> the use of heading tags in the sidebar and document structure.  You
> can read the thread at
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user/16355.  In
> short, the pmwiki-users list is trying to decide how do we keep
> headings used in the sidebar from wrecking the outline structure, and
> from "outvoting" the page's real name in search engine indexes.  So
> far the consensus is to stop using heading in the sidebar, and fake
> them with some other element.  I feel that this is a lesser evil,
> rather than a semantic improvement.
> 
> As I see it, the root problem here is that the model of a what webpage
> is says that it's one document.  But when did you last see a
> well-designed live webpage that contained *just* one document?  If the
> W3C's site was constructed like that, we could only find other W3C
> pages if they were linked in the body text, because there would be no
> navigation links.  Logically speaking, navigation is never the page
> content proper unless the page is a sitemap.
> 
> Best practice in web design demands plenty of site-related content in
> every page, such as the masthead and navigation bar(s).  There may
> also be document-related secondary content, like a sidebar for a
> magazine story.  Evidently, real webpages contain more than just one
> document each.
> 
> Does anyone else agree that the "1 webpage = 1 document" idea is flawed?  
> 
> What if we had a way to mark content separate from the page's primary
> document, so that user agents can recognize these site-related and
> document-related chunks, and consider their heading structure
> separately from that of the primary document?

You might want to take a look at what the WHATWG is doing with the
Web Apps 1.0 drafts. The sectioning elements and heading structure in
particular seem to address this problem. If you have suggestions for
improvement, of course you are strongly encouraged to comment on the
mailing list.

   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#sections
   http://www.whatwg.org/mailing-list

~fantasai

Received on Wednesday, 17 August 2005 03:04:20 UTC