Ryan Nichols wrote:
Really a browser doesn't understand what any of the tags are. What you see are only the browsers default behavior at rendering certain items it's aware of in the DTD.
A browser doesn't understand of course. It parses. Behaviour is programmed in HTML user agents.
This was all put in by whoever made the browser, and is totally up to the browser. Default renderings are not specified in W3C.
"This style sheet describes the typical formatting of all HTML 4.0 ([HTML40]) elements based on extensive research into current UA practice. Developers are encouraged to use it as a default style sheet in their implementations."
[http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/sample.html]
Whilst it is just an "encouragement" it is worth mentioning as it has some bearing on the renderings of various browsers.
The old way is to code your markup to the browser default behavior,
really we need to code and markup to the content, semantically, then use
the tools we have to tell the browser how to render.
I agree that we should code well without writing at the expense of semantics. Too many HTML documents are a mish-mash of spans and divs. We should try our best to work with the elements which we have. Don't forget (this isn't aimed directly, but generally), CSS is there to aid a HTML document visually; not all people are *viewing* a HTML document. This is why good structure is essential and is of higher importance - IMO - than styling.
I always found that the more I think in terms of the future and the way
things are heading, it helps me make better decisions on what to do now.
My preferred method is looking at how I can make the experience flow the best for the least privileged visitor, and then I improve from there. But I'm a usability and accessibility man, which is the plain vanilla ice cream to the choc chip css.
-- Paul Connolley SQL/Systems Programmer Egocentric - http://egocentric.co.uk
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