Jackie, you said "I really didn't want a whole load of div classes with headers & p tags etc churned out repeatedly down the page". Why not? It is clearly the most appropriate way to mark up that content. And what would the use of fieldsets change? You would still have the same quantity of markup except that it is less semantically accurate.
You are suggesting that you would leave out the header elements but who would benefit from their omission or replacement with legends? It seems that you are searching for some kind of minimal markup without thinking about why you're doing it. How is a screen reader user going to understand the content of a page that just contains fieldsets and perhaps some paragraphs but no headers or lists? How are they going to navigate effectively though it? It's not just them either. Opera users who use keyboard navigation can also skip from header to header. And what about programmatic access by other software applications? They will not understand your personal definition of the semantic structure so they will view the entire page as one lump rather than numerous groups of related content. These are the kind of considerations that should drive your coding decisions. Mark up your content in a manner that is unambiguous to other users, and don't adopt a bizarre interpretation of the standards that no one other than a handful of 'imaginative' coders will understand. Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jackie Reid Sent: 05 June 2007 06:35 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Use of Fieldsets other than in form? Hi all respondees Ben Said > ...it depends if you're talking about page layout or actual content - > ie. is your business name, logo etc being used in a header; or are you > creating a page which lists a bunch of businesses? For the former I'd > simply use a DIV, for the latter a list (maybe a definition list). I am doing the latter.. (a page (or more) of business listings) so I was wanted an easy way to tie all the relevent information into one nice little block. As Lucien said the W3schools states that "The fieldset element draws a box around its containing elements." with no mention of form controls and that's why I asked the question in the first place. It was a response to an "is there a better way to do this" sort of a moment! Also as Lucien said.. i didnt just want to draw a box visually around a bit of content.. i wanted to be able to clearly "group" the related information together neatly. I considered a DL but found it too restricting and I really didn't want a whole load of div classes with headers & p tages etc churned out repeatedly down the page. It seemed to me that if the W3 schools definition of a fieldset was correct and valid then it was ideal for my requirements. The fact the validator passed it also seemed to me to say that it could be used in this way. If <fieldset> can't be used this way why does it pass validation? So... what to do? I dunno frankly... the jury is still out. I will say this though ...i think its a shame that when someone takes the time to respond to a question and states their point of view only to get shot down in flames and virtually abused. This list is here to enable us to discuss the implementation of webstandards amongst like minded people and I'm sure no one is really "hell-bent on abusing the standards". Cheers Jackie ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
