Divya wrote:
this is my understanding of the differences between <section>
and <article>, forgive me if I am not rigorous in my usage of English:
1. section to "cut" or "section" different parts of the layout of the
webpage
No. This is what <div> is for.
<section> is for enclosing related content. <article> is for enclosing
related content *that is also independent*.
2. article is used for each similar content, each blog post in a set
of (1
or more) blog posts, each user member avatar in a set of user member
avatars, each product in a set of products.
Not necessarily. If you would use <article> for a page of 10 blog
posts, you should also use <article> for a page containing only one of
those blog posts. The context isn't as important as the content. If
the content *could* stand alone, then you are supposed to use
<article>. Whether or not the contact actually *is* standing alone (in
the current document) doesn't matter.
3. articles always occur within a section except in rare occasions
when
there is nothing else other than the specific article on the page as
content.
No. There is no correlation.
* <articles> do not need to be nested within a <section>. They can be
children of the <body> element, for example (the body element isn't
sectioning content although it is a sectioning root).
* <articles> can be nested within an <article>. The spec currently
advises doing this for blog comments (even though it's questionable
whether or not those comments "stand alone").
* <section>s can be nested within an <article>. Different sections of
a news story or blog post, for example.
* <section>s can nested within a <section>.
The usecase that leaps to me is:
HTML 4:
<div class="maincolumn">
<div class="item">
News entry 1
</div>
<div class="item">
News entry 2
</div>
</div>
HTML 5:
<section class="maincolumn">
<article>
News entry 1
</article>
<article>
News entry 2
</article>
</section>
This should probably be:
<div class="maincolumn">
<article>
News entry 1
</article>
<article>
News entry 2
</article>
</div>
I often use <div class="item"> to mark up the smallest large unit of
content
that is repeatable and my understanding is that <article> would be a
good
replacement of that.
Only if the content is independent. Otherwise use <div> (or <section>
if the content is related).
--
Jeremy Keith
a d a c t i o
http://adactio.com/
