Uses of H1 and TITLE element

Dear Quality Assurance,

In W3C QA Quick Tips [1] we found more points regarding titles. So
there are confusion for the semantic meaning of H1 and TITLE elements,
so it is ALWAYS misused in order to gain positions on search engines
(and this practies works well).

Definition of TITLE[2]: Authors should use the TITLE element to
identify the contents of a document. Since users often consult
documents out of context, authors should provide context-rich titles.
Thus, instead of a title such as "Introduction", which doesn't provide
much contextual background, authors should supply a title such as
"Introduction to Medieval Bee-Keeping" instead.

H1 is defined in this way[2]: A heading element briefly describes the
topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by
user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a
document automatically. There are six levels of headings in HTML with
H1 as the most important and H6 as the least.

Well, in order to have a "context-rich" and also for archive offline
in a great way and order, the TITLE should contain:

%Site Title% - %Sequence Number if is a part of collection%. %Page
Title (a context-rich title)%

An example. I'm archiving more CSS resources from two sites. Usign
only page content in title this is the situation:

first_example_for_typography_css.htm
foundamentals_of_css.htm
hello_word_with_css.htm
introduction_to_css.htm
selectors_in_css.htm
way_to_references_elements_attributes_and_classes.htm

There are more confusion.

Well, adding sequence number there are more confusion becaouse in this
example I've considered two similar guides in sturcture, but in real
world it's difficult to find:

01_foundamentals_of_css.htm
01_introduction_to_css.htm
02_selectors_in_css.htm
02_way_to_references_elements_attributes_and_classes.htm
03_hello_word_with_css.htm
03_first_example_for_typography_css.htm

So, now we can obtain for the correct sequence of pages, but not good.
In fact I don't know if 02_selectors_in_css.htm is the sequence of
01_foundamentals or 01_introduction.

Adding also Site Name (short and for identification)

myCSS_01_foundamentals_of_css.htm
myCSS_02_selectors_in_css.htm
myCSS_03_first_example_for_typography_css.htm
yourCSS_01_introduction_to_css.htm
yourCSS_02_way_to_references_elements_attributes_and_classes.htm
yourCSS_03_hello_word_with_css.htm

This is ordered well.

For H1 element I found two way for it's meaning, basing on pages found at W3.org

- On home pages (if it represent a summary of site content): H1 may be
%Site Name%
- On content pages H1 may be the first content, like %Page Title%

This is right? Or what is the true way to implement It? Also I can
write an article to post on this topic. After clarification.

[1] WAI Quick Tips: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html

Regards,

Simone

Received on Friday, 20 October 2006 10:20:20 UTC