Re: [WSG] Semantic Breadcrumbs

[Mordechai Peller]

Kevin Futter wrote:
Yes, breadcrumb elements are strongly related in exactly the same way that
sentence elements (i.e. words) are; and sentences can be rendered with
precise meaning even if some words are omitted (prepositions, conjunctions,
most adverbs, many adjectives).
Not at all in the same way. Each word in a sentence gets its meaning 
from the sentence, while with breadcrumbs its the list which receives 
meaning from the items. It's the commonality which the items bring to 
the list which gives the list meaning. Words of a sentence have no 
commonality outside the sentence.

Removing any word from a sentence removes meaning from the sentence. 
Take "His car," versus "His blue car." The latter conveys more meaning 
than the former. A longer breadcrumb list may provide more information 
than a shorter one, but no additional meaning.

This is true, and in my opinion only makes it more useful in a breadcrumbs
context, as you can't arbitrarily move breadcrumb elements around or omit
them without destroying the meaning of the whole, either.
 

You can't change the order because it's an ordered list, but the order 
in which each item appears doesn't effect the meaning of the links. 
While its place in the order conveys additional meaning, the meaning of 
the link remains unchanged. A word outside a sentence is of little 
worth, however, the value of a link is unchanged irrespective of whether 
or not it's in a list. If I were to say "blue," you would likely respond 
"'Blue" what?" because the word "blue" isn't useful on its own. On the 
other hand, the link "http://www.somedomain.com/thispage.html"; means the 
same thing wherever you encounter it.

In XHTML 2 there's a navigation list (<nl>).
   

I did not know that - it sounds useful.
 

XHTML 2, imho, offers a lot more ability to convey semantic meaning to a 
document; it looks to be a major step forward. Too bad IE won't support 
it until version 10. :-D


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