The desire for semantic purity is only one of many factors when deciding how to mark up a page. Other factors include (but are not limited to) UA support, the user experience, the time available to implement the design and the expected life of the website. I would expect a professional designer to balance these appropriately, taking into account the best interests of their customer.
The ability to find the appropriate balance is what sets professional apart from hobbyists. It's easy to go to one extreme - it saves you having to think. Anyone can write semantically perfect code that validates if they don't care how long it takes, what the user experience is like and what it looks like in browsers that are not standards-compliant. If you're designing your own site and you're on a mission to embarrass UA vendors into making a better product then go right ahead. But if you're designing websites for real people to use with real user agents, you're doing them a disservice. If you're being paid for that design I would say you have no right to follow your personal preferences rather than make a professional judgement, unless your customer has given informed consent. The average life of a website is only a couple of years before it gets redesigned or scrapped. Designing for non-existent user agents is therefore futile because there's little likelihood they will come into existence within the life of such a site. To then make compromises that are to the detriment of existing user agents is absurd. Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thierry Koblentz Sent: 09 January 2008 06:58 To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] semantic list with explanations > Absolutely it is. I'm rather surprised at how badly they handle DLs, > but almost zero percent of web developers use them even now (remember that > standards-compliant designers represent perhaps 1% of the industry). > Go back just a few years and no one at all was using them. > Is it not also the responsibility of designers to design for the user agents that actually exist rather than utopian user agents that do not exist? > After all, the WCAG make several references to "Until user agents..." which explicitly acknowledges that user agents don't yet have all the > functionality that users need. In fact they never will because expectations will change over time. > In another document that I can't currently find, the W3C state that it > is necessary for designers, user agent vendors and the standards themselves > to all move together. There's no use one of these going off in their > own direction at their own pace. It's never going to be possible for all of > them to be exactly in sync but that's what we need to aim for while > making progress in an agreed direction. > I don't think that using headings in this example is cheating at all. > It's perfectly valid as other people have suggested. IMHO, the markup you suggested would be valid *only* if this succession of name/value pairs was *not* considered as a list. If it is a list, then the only proper markup is a list (imho). > Remember that the purpose of semantics is to convey information effectively. There is no point in using them if they do not achieve that goal. > If you care about the users you will provide semantics that 'are' > useful to them, not semantics that 'should' be useful. I think a DL is the element that would convey the information the more effectively. And I guess that's why most of the posters who replied to the OP before you did, told him to use a definition lists. Because for all these posters it is the element they think would be the most semantic in regard to that content; best proof (imho) that it should be the markup of choice. > Could you stand in front of your customer a justify your viewpoint to them? I don't suppose they would be terribly impressed because they want > the best user experience for their customers. How can you > intentionally deny them that? The same way I tell them we should not use table for layout to please people using old browsers. To me, it makes absolutely no difference. I think there should be no double standards when it comes to UAs. If you think it is important to not really "follow the rules" by using headings/paragraphs instead of a DL to give SR users a better experience then let's say "bravo" to table markup used for layout when it is done to increase user experience! -- Regards, Thierry | http://www.TJKDesign.com ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
