Comments on: Semantic vs client XHTML/CSS http://www.oneafrikan.com/2006/05/18/semantic-vs-client-xhtmlcss/ This is the evolution of One Afrikan. And this blog is going to change it's design too. Promise. Booyaa. Sun, 05 Jun 2011 17:16:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Adrian http://www.oneafrikan.com/2006/05/18/semantic-vs-client-xhtmlcss/comment-page-1/#comment-1097 Adrian Thu, 18 May 2006 15:38:55 +0000 http://www.oneafrikan.com/archives/2006/05/18/semantic-vs-client-xhtmlcss/#comment-1097 The pair of you are nuts. I'll include me in that too, as I'm answering. Go and look up "opportunity cost" in an economics reference. I can see this being controversial but I'd look at it like this. The Strong tag isn't semantic. Semantic refers to what things _are_, not how they should be rendered. I'm sure most readers here will know that. So the question I'd ask is, "Why is this thing being rendered strongly? What is it about this thing that means it should be treated in this way?" The answer, presumably, is something like "Because it's the first sentence of a page". The "if you strip out the CSS" bit is suspicious but leads us to the underlying problem. The whole point of CSS is that you can abstract content from presentation. It's designed to be stripped out. XHTML isn't really semantic at all. The default rendering styles for the native XHTML elements are just that - defaults. They're not set in stone and crucially, don't really mean anything. On one page, h1 might be a news story headline. On another, the name of a user. On a third, the name of a product. h1 is really telling us nothing here semantically about what the content _is_, only about how it relates to other page elements (more important, less important). But really, this is just a holdover from pre-CSS days when there was no separation of content and presentation at all. HTML was a purely presentational markup system. Note also that (X)HTML makes no attempt to enforce the nested outline structure of heading elements. It's a joke. Compare that to how an outline structure might be enforced in a valid XML document according to a specific DTD. It wouldn't surprise me if the XHTML committee considered strictly enforcing the heading outline structure it but decided it wasn't worth the argument. So if you want to be semantically pedantic, the answer is to remove the Strong tags and replace them with a nested span that's classed or id'd according to the meaning of the element. Then, just use CSS to render that however you like (for this medium), even if that's just font-weight: bold; Someone reading your XHTML source will then know, explicitly, why you're handling that bit of content differently from the others. The pair of you are nuts. I’ll include me in that too, as I’m answering. Go and look up “opportunity cost” in an economics reference.

I can see this being controversial but I’d look at it like this.

The Strong tag isn’t semantic. Semantic refers to what things _are_, not how they should be rendered. I’m sure most readers here will know that.

So the question I’d ask is, “Why is this thing being rendered strongly? What is it about this thing that means it should be treated in this way?” The answer, presumably, is something like “Because it’s the first sentence of a page”.

The “if you strip out the CSS” bit is suspicious but leads us to the underlying problem. The whole point of CSS is that you can abstract content from presentation. It’s designed to be stripped out.

XHTML isn’t really semantic at all. The default rendering styles for the native XHTML elements are just that – defaults. They’re not set in stone and crucially, don’t really mean anything. On one page, h1 might be a news story headline. On another, the name of a user. On a third, the name of a product. h1 is really telling us nothing here semantically about what the content _is_, only about how it relates to other page elements (more important, less important). But really, this is just a holdover from pre-CSS days when there was no separation of content and presentation at all. HTML was a purely presentational markup system. Note also that (X)HTML makes no attempt to enforce the nested outline structure of heading elements. It’s a joke. Compare that to how an outline structure might be enforced in a valid XML document according to a specific DTD. It wouldn’t surprise me if the XHTML committee considered strictly enforcing the heading outline structure it but decided it wasn’t worth the argument.

So if you want to be semantically pedantic, the answer is to remove the Strong tags and replace them with a nested span that’s classed or id’d according to the meaning of the element. Then, just use CSS to render that however you like (for this medium), even if that’s just font-weight: bold; Someone reading your XHTML source will then know, explicitly, why you’re handling that bit of content differently from the others.

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