[thelist] Coding standards.... [headers]

[Lee kowalkowski]

On 11/12/06, Julian Rickards <julian.rickards at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't look at heading level as a degree of importance but rather as a
> summary of what is discussed following the heading. H2 is no more important
> than H3 and so on, it is just that H2 covers a broader topic (not
> necessarily longer either) than H3 which is more focussed.

I tend to agree with you, after all a heading is semantically
meaningless if it has no associated content.  But the W3C HTML
Specification mentions both importance and structure:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.5.5.

> Other than an ordered list, I don't know that HTML provides for degrees of
> importance.

I don't think importance can even be implied in an ordered list.  It
depends on context, an ordered list may be used for chronological
numbering, like the steps in a recipe.

--

I often see encouragement for only one H1 element in a web page, which
I also tend to agree with.  However, in a "portal" application, one
could view several disparate "documents" (portlets) confederated into
the same page.

Hmm, dubiously assuming portals provide good usability in the first
place - I think there could be situations where it would be
semantically meaningless to put potentially unrelated parts of a page
under the same heading, without the said heading becoming just as
meaningless.

-- 
Lee