Sent by Aaron Boodman on 29 November 2002 21:09
No, you're completely right. Which is why all the discussion of whether it
is correct or not to use UL/OL for navigation is so irrelevant. HTML is not
designed to present navigation with any set of elements, which explains why
it is so bad at it.
HTML is designed only to present a document; what we think of today as
"navigation" was supposed to be external to the documents, built up from the
LINK element inside the doc, and from other meta-type information.
Since the design of HTML has been fundamentally bastardized in our
present-day web (and I don't mean that in a bad way), I don't see what all
the hubub is about discussing the specifics of that bastardization.
--
Aaron Boodman
aaron | www @ youngpup.net
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Newman" [EMAIL-REMOVED]>
To: "css-discuss" [EMAIL-REMOVED]>
Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 5:26 AM
Subject: Re: [css-d] Re: structural HTML question and styles
> this may be histrionics, but...
>
> One thing to remember about HTML's concept of a "document" comes from a
> single place: scholarly communication. When CERN (I think it was CERN,
> maybe it was IOP...) developped the original HTML spec in 1989 it was to
> allow scientific papers to be shared on an electronic network (over a
> 300baud modem!), so the "sturctural elements" that we all know and
> "love" come directly from the basic format of a PH.D thesis or
> scientific paper. Title, contents, headings, images, citations, tables,
> blockquotes, etc. The whole range of HTML tags is drawn from the lingo
> of scholarly publishing, not e-commerce, graphic design or typography
> etc. So what makes sense in scholarly publishing (a primary topic (a
> single h1) with several subpoints of discussion (several h2s) which
> probably contain further subtopics (countless h3s)) doesn't make a
> whole lot of sense to a blog or whatnot (which probably goes a long way
> towards explaining why early browsers has such lously control over
> typography: it was considered irrelevant use of bandwidth)
>
> All of this stuff probably feels like a nuisance because the
> pages/sites that most of us work on are not what CERN originally
> envisioned when the created this little beast. The model they created
> envisions a "document" in a specific context that is very far removed
> from what many people think of when they design for the web. We try to
> create pages that provide a "user experience," pages that play to the
> human side of information consumption. Navigation, usability, novelty
> and aesthetics have become the keystones of good web design, where as
> HTML's scientific-communication-centric origins favour cold, brutal
> efficiency. I can't say for sure, but I think that HTML was supposed
> to function in much the same way that FTP and gopher archives function,
> except that they'd be easier to access on dumb terminals and the like,
> so little attention was paid to format and aesthetics because the
> primary concern was content of a single paper, not presentation of that
> paper or group of papers, etc.. I'd wager that the good folks who gave
> us HTML never dreamed that it would be a tool for graphic designers, etc.
>
> Anyways,I don't know if that helps anyone in the least, but my take on
> the situation is that h1, h2, etc are structural and should be used
> properly. You wouldn't try to build a house with a first and third
> floor, but no second floor, so why would you use an h1 and an h3 without
> an h2? Having said that, if you're page doesn't have a "structure,"
> just a "presentation" then you probably shouldn't feel bound to use
> structural elements to achieve a presentation. Hence, CSS.
>
> and then again, I could be *completely* wrong
>
> j.
>
>
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