On 5/7/07, Keith Alexander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm of the opinion that "Semantic HTML" is a perfectly fine term for Semantic HTML, and I'm a little sceptical of the utility of a new acronym for it. If there's a problem with people still not understanding semantic html, either the arguments for it aren't being made clear enough and loud enough, or maybe the arguments simply don't chime with html authors ' perceptions of what they are doing.
It's not like we weren't aware of the phrase "semantic html" when we went into discussions about POSH (obviously, as it's part of the new acronym). It isn't that the arguments aren't clear enough or loudly enough; we've had a good 4-5 years of tooting the proverbial semantic horn. The problem is that, in a lesser amount of time, microformats have totally taken off and captured people's imaginations whereas semantic HTML, the parent container of microformats, has relatively stagnated. Why is this? Why is the new "microformats" term more successful than "semantic HTML"? Well, right or wrong, we felt that 1) microformats have an aura of "cool" to them and 2) they have a pretty process for getting involved. Plenty of folks have been pushing semantic markup for some time; fewer think that semantic markup is "cool". Therefore, for pure marketing and attention reasons, we decided that coming up with less of a mouthful would give us a chance to redefine what getting involved in the broader semantics movement would look like -- and would give us a way to package the concept as being on par with, or even as coming before, the microformats effort. Moreover, suggesting that people merely use "semantic HTML" is a bit misleading and open-ended, in that HTML itself has a poor vocabulary of semantic objects -- hence microformats and the work to codify some common classnames in HTML5 (I tend to disagree with HTML5's efforts though, and think that classnames should remain undefined, and let community adoption define their use and/or reuse.) POSH is the perfect anecdote to what I might call semantic malaise, where web developers and designers would love to go semantic, but apart from moving away from presentational elements and using tables for layouts, there hasn't been much beyond that that offers a way to "level up", whereas with microformats, there's a clear process (think of hCard as being a level-80 microformat, etc). Anyway, love it or hate, use it or dismiss, I intend to base a lot of my upcoming promotional efforts on promoting POSH and microformats in tandem... with the limited success that "semantic HTML" has had in recent years and with the onslaught of closed web technologies like SilverLight, Apollo and JavaFX picking up steam, what's there to lose at this point? We've got to do something other than just hope that somehow, someday "semantic" will click in people's head as a glorious AHA and as the key to the future! Chris -- Chris Messina Citizen Provocateur & Open Source Advocate-at-Large Work: http://citizenagency.com Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog Cell: 412 225-1051 Skype: factoryjoe This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
