Mike,
Wednesday, February 7, 2007, 3:20:25 PM, you wrote:
>>
>> Yes a DIV is semantically neutral, but it has a structural meaning.
>> And HR doesn't have a semantic meaning either, it's just visual with a
>> structural implication.
>>
mbbc> Would you care to back that up by explaining what 'structural meaning' a
mbbc> DIV has?
Ok, I think some of those misunderstandings are caused by my
english... I'll try to explain what I mean:
A DIV is used to put more structure into a HTML document. In a DIV one
can group other markup. The DIV doesn't say anything about it's
content. (compared for example with a P which says that it's content
is a paragraph of text.)
But a markup like
<div id="first">
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
</div>
<div id="second">
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
</div>
holds more information than just
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>...</p>
because a machine (or a human being looking at the code) can
distinguish between the two groups of paragraphs.
The DIV marks the start and the finish of the group.
mbbc> By default, nothing about a DIV is visible, even in a visual browser. In
mbbc> an aural or text-only browser a DIV might as well not exist.
Yes, that's right. But I believe that one should use CSS for making
the structure visible if appropriate. And if you need to do this for
text-only browsers too, I don't think that an HR is the right way to
do it. Some words about the new structural group like a heading are
much more accessible than HR.
I admit that the HR is an expression of the fact that something is
finished, but I doubt that this as easy to understand as some text.
I don't want to convince you that the DIV is the only and always right
thing to use and that the use of HR as a separator is wrong. I think
that we are talking about to ways of markup and one has to decide
which one is the best in a special situation. I prefer the DIV most of
the time, but you may do it another way. It's just important to know
the small difference...
regards
Martin
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