[thelist] semantic markup

[Diane Soini]

Every now and then a question about semantic markup comes up and it 
makes me wonder about something.

It's all the rage right now to write semantic markup, but for the most 
part, semanitic markup was invented to describe prose documents. And 
what we are creating is often something more akin to a user interface. 
So why then do we have to drive ourselves nuts trying to style, for 
example, <li> tags with CSS (probably one of the most difficult 
elements to style consistently across browsers) just to make a user 
interface navigation bar? (Or the image with the caption problem, for 
another example.)

The thing that really bugs me with <li> tags is that for browsers such 
as Lynx that do not use the CSS, you get a vertical list of links 
rather than the horizontal bar of buttons you really intend--and what 
is actually more convenient for the user in my opinion. It's a 
horizontal navigation _bar_, not a vertical bullet list!

I sure wish there was some markup to address what these web pages 
really are, which is a user interface with, possibly, a prose document 
in the middle of it. Guess XML will solve this someday.

Sorry for this post, but it's been bugging me.

<tip type="favicon, but not for Windows">
You can have a favicon without a .ico image. Just use a .png instead.
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png" type="image/x-icon" />
Doesn't solve any of the problems of not having a "real" favicon would, 
and it won't display on Windows machines, but if you don't care about 
any of that, this'll work fine for Mac OSX users whose browsers support 
it. Or, you could have one icon for one group and another for the 
others.
</tip>

***
Don't be afraid to try something new. An amateur built the ark. 
Professionals built the Titanic. -unknown