Very interesting discussion on a point that often causes controversy.
Here is my 2c for what its worth:
The use of a single H1 per _page_ on a site comes from a mixture of
IA, semantics, Accessibility and Usability with a nod to the history
of publishing.
I consider the notion of semantics as "a matter of opinion" as
something of a strange opinion itself. Semantics refers to logic or in
the case of a web site logical structure or definition which if you
start from a logical premise you can then test each decision you make
and therefore it would not be a matter for opinion.
That said the logical premise in this case is that a web page is,
well, a page - it stands alone within a single context as it can be
removed from the web site (by printing, downloading or copying).
Therefore semantically and otherwise the page will have an overarching
theme or topic which, from the browsers (machine) point of view,
should be incapsulated in the title of the page but for the user /
reader it logically appears in the first heading (nominally H1). It
follows then that this is the heading for the *page*. Its the most
important heading and it states what the whole page is about, there
for there can really be only one H1.
You can relate this to publishing with the notion of chapters in a
book or articles in a magazine or academic journal, or stories in a
newspaper. Each is an individual entity with its own context and has
an individual theme / topic encapsulated in a heading/title.
Of course one can confuse the literal meaning of a page (e.g physical
page of a newspaper - which has multiple articles with multiple
headings or magazine which has one article on many physical pages)
into this argument but my argument is that semantically a page is
contextually singular covering an overarching theme or concept that
should be incapsulated in its title and first, and therefore only,
major heading.
So just to cove the argument I made against myself:
<h1>My Journal</h1>
<h2>My First Article</h2>
<h2>My Second Article</h2>
<h2>My Third Article</h2>
<h2>My Fourth Article</h2>
And 'My First Article' might link to another *page* - thus:
<h1>My First Article</h1>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>blah blah blah</p>
Should you wrap an image with a H1 tag? Why would you? That's what
we've got CSS for - swap the content of the H1 out for the image the
right way and then all bases are covered.
That's my 2c which I hope makes sense.
--
Regards,
Peter Stagg
Faculty Webmaster
Arts Information Technology
University AUC Representative <http://www.auc.edu.au/>
<http://www.auc.edu.au/monash>
Faculty of Arts
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
Building 11, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton
Telephone +61 3 9905 1221 Facsimile +61 3 9905 5117
Mobile 0407 865 159
Email peter.st...@arts.monash.edu.au
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au
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