On Jan 8, 2008, at 3:30 PM, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
Why would we need to group containers together if it is not for styling purpose?

Because we're saying that anything in the container belongs together (thematically, content-wise, logically, etc).


On Jan 8, 2008, at 7:56 PM, Thierry Koblentz wrote:

Does it prove that DIVs carry more semantics?


I'm wondering if the pursuit of semantics might sometimes be taken to unreasonable extremes?

Must everything that is contained in the marked-up document contain some semantic value? Must anything that does not have an inherent semantic value be excluded? Surely not.

If an element is semantically neutral (as DIV) then it necessarily has no impact on the semantic value of the content contained within. My understanding is that the whole argument against using tables for structure is that that use distorts the semantics of the table's content.

I hope this analogy is not too far-fetched, but I don't think anyone would argue that a page or a column is not a semantically neutral container of content in a book, still less that pages should be dispensed with as they don't have any semantic value! Anyone (except perhaps the occasional Kerouac purist...) want to go back to reading scrolls? Parts, chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, clauses and individual words (and let's remember that the introduction of the humble space between words was once a revolutionary innovation), even the use of different fonts to represent different voices, are all divisions of content that add something semantically. But the individual page or column is entirely neutral - different editions of a book may have very different page numbers, but it's generally agreed that they are in fact the same book. Also, many books contain empty pages by necessity as part of the binding process - it's laughable to imagine a movement calling for empty pages to be excluded on the grounds that they don't have any meaning. So perhaps it's not too unreasonable to carry the analogy forward and suggest that "book" is equivalent to "website", "part" is equivalent to "site area", "chapter" is equivalent to "web page" and "page" or "column" is equivalent to "DIV"? Which would allow for the continued use of P, OL/UL, DL, and the dread TABLE (let's not bring I/EM and B/STRONG into it!) to support their intended semantic roles.

None of which, by the way, Thierry, is intended to detract from the skill and ingenuity of your IMPRESSIVE demonstration.

Andrew

http://www.andrewmaben.net
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

"In a well designed user interface, the user should not need instructions."




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