On 22 May 2008, at 05:15, Julián Landerreche wrote:
I wasn't convinced at first because:
- fieldset/legends are used in forms to group controls. This is
common usage/practice, and even more, it's the usage recommended by
the W3C, as some of you already remarked on this thread, .ç
Yes, that is what fieldset is designed for.
I wasn't convinced by counter arguments because:
- this isn't a CSS/JS issue. In fact, the idea is to have it as
structural labels/markup, that will be probably invisible for
sighted users. I'm not trying to achieve something fancy, although I
have said that fieldset+legend looks fine, and more important,
helpful for users when CSS is "disabled" (browser default CSS)
Most of the arguments against it (at least those which haven't been
shot down already) were about semantics, not CSS or JS.
And also, not convinced because of this other reasoning (hope it's
not a fallacy):
- if it validates (true)
So do layout tables. DTDs can't describe the language in /that/ much
detail.
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
and
- if the W3C doesn't explicitly says anything about not using
fieldset/legend outside forms (¿true?)
They don't say you shouldn't use <br><br> to indicate the start of a
new paragraph either.
If the spec explicitly listed everything you shouldn't abuse markup
for, it would be huge. Tables are an exception due to the widespread
abuse they had when the spec was written.
then
-> it could be used to add semantics or meaning in a new way outside
forms.
If that meaning is "These controls should be groups, and here is their
caption".
Let me add other real-world examples of using/combining HTML
elements/attributes to create new semantics, all well known by us:
- ul > li > a = a navigation menu
The semantics there are no new. A navigation menu is a list of links.
This is just using the right markup for it.
- div + abbr + span + predifined classes = microformats (chunks of
HTML with added meaning). As Jason stated above: "<div>s are for
separating components/sections of a page and can be semantically
very strong, especially when given a meaningful class or id name"
Microformats take some markup that is *correct* for a given pattern of
content, add some class names and then document the pattern.
Probably, at first, nobody though that by combining an unordered
list of items with links could be "seen" as a navigation.
The table of contents on the HTML 4 spec uses lists. So the idea has
been around for a long while.
In fact, before the Web Standards mindset change, not too many
people were doing nav menus that way.
No, they were using tables because the liked the way they rendered in
browsers.
And that's probably my point: trying to add new semantics and better
accessibility with current HTML elements.
The closest you can come to adding new semantics is agreed sets of
class names, which isn't a very good way, but was about the only
option open during the days when HTML wasn't being developed.
What you are suggesting is taking old semantics and using them even
though they don't fit. Fieldsets group controls and their labels. You
can't just throw away all but the first two words of that.
--
David Dorward
http://dorward.me.uk/
http://blog.dorward.me.uk/
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