Whoops.
Must have caught the cranky people on a bad day ;)
I in fact did quote the entire sentence. The ellipsis at the end
indicates there is more, but the "more" in this case was the rest of the
paragraph, not the rest of the sentence. For clarity, I didn't ignore
any part of the sentence, and it was in no way my intention to
misdirect. I'm not even quite sure how that suggestion came about. If
you're interested, the whole paragraph is...
"The FIELDSET element allows authors to group thematically related
controls and labels. Grouping controls makes it easier for users to
understand their purpose while simultaneously facilitating tabbing
navigation for visual user agents and speech navigation for
speech-oriented user agents. The proper use of this element makes
documents more accessible."
For a comparison, the w3schools site defines fieldset as "The fieldset
element draws a box around its containing elements." And that's the
complete sentence. Note no mention of form controls.
I leave it to others to debate the authority of the w3schools site, and
it's a debate worth having.
I realise that many of the people here take pleasure in the pedantic
application of standards, and I'll state for the record that I agree
with the concept of the semantic web. But I am a pragmatic coder and if
I wish to group thematically related elements (*not* necessarily form
controls), then I'm free to use the fieldset if I wish to. Sure a DIV
would work. But a DIV is void of semantic. It's the refuge of the
unimaginative who want to wrap everything in excess tags with no
semantic meaning just to hang CSS off. To me, a fieldset is obviously
the correct semantic here.
Would I use it simply to have the browser draw a box around something?
No. That's a presentational issue best dealt with by applying CSS to the
relevant container.
But the original question wasn't about drawing a box. It was about how
to group any sort of related information together. And I say a fieldset
would work. It's not the only solution, but it's a valid one. And not
just valid by the DTD. I think it's semantically valid as well.
BTW, I've said my piece, and I'll be quiet now. This mailing list has
become the domain of too many snippy little flame wars of late. I don't
know what's been getting up everyone's backsides, but I think I'll go
lurk somewhere else for a while.
Lucien.
--
Lucien Stals
Multimedia/Web Developer
Academic Development and Support
Swinburne University of Technology
PO Box 218 Hawthorn, 3122, Australia
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
telephone: +61 3 9214 4474
office: AD223
>>> On 5/06/2007 at 12:22 pm, "Steve Green"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I totally disagree with Lucien. It's nonsensical to suggest you can
just
> ignore parts of a sentence that you find inconvenient. The definition
is
> totally unambiguous - it states "group thematically related controls
and
> labels", not "group thematically related content such as controls
and
> labels".
>
> I say don't even think about it.
>
> Day after day in this forum some people seem to be hell-bent on
abusing the
> standards like this? Why? It's not big, it's not clever and it's not
> necessary.
>
> Steve
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Lucien Stals
> Sent: 05 June 2007 02:42
> To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
> Subject: [WSG] Re: Use of Fieldsets other than in form?
>
> The HTML 4 specs say...
>
> "The FIELDSET element allows authors to group thematically related
controls
> and labels..."
>
> While "controls and labels" refer to form controls, the fieldset
itself can
> contain anything. My opinion would be that the important part of the
use of
> fieldset is "group thematically related" content.
>
> I say go for it!
>
> Lucien.
Swinburne University of Technology
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