On 1/26/06, Miika Mäkinen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Christian, that was my point... <small> atleast *sounds* presentational > (thought it could indicate text that is "less important") and that was why I > wasn't happy to see it's included in HTML5... > http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-small > Perhaps re-read the description of <small> in the WebApps spec. The point is that they've specified a meaning for it. In 'HTML5' (or whatever it eventually gets called), <small> means something and is differentiable from other text in the page.
<small> may sound presentational because that's what it is in HTML4. But in HTML5 it refers to 'the small print' of a document, which is an entirely different use of text from a standard paragraph. What the WHATWG are doing which I think is clever, is they're reusing existing, meaningless presentational elements where they can. If I remember correctly, <i> has been re-specified too. As for the new elements: <header>, <footer> and so forth: It's all about separating _documents_ into component parts. There's nothing presentational about them: You have headers on letters, official documents and all sorts, thus there's now an element to identify that section of a document. Same for a footer. Consider the detail in which you can describe computer code in HTML: <code>, <var>, <samp>, <kbd>… huge descriptive power for technical publishing. But there's nothing like the same level of detail available non-technical documents. Most of these new HTML5 elements are designed to make HTML a richer language for the things the web is used for: Namely publishing documents within the frame of a larger website. <article> allows you to identify the primary page content from the site 'frame'. Useful for print stylesheets and generic richness, *very* useful for search engines (it means that you can avoid indexing unrelated content like advertising and navigation). Lots of examples. Could go on for hours, but this is probably plenty long enough! G'night, Ben
