[thelist] happy heading hierarchies

[rudy]

you know how they say you should always code <h1> first, and then <h2>, and
then <h3>, and so on?

here's what the w3c says on the subject --

    "Some people consider skipping heading levels to be bad practice.
     They accept H1 H2 H1 while they do not accept H1 H3 H1 since the
     heading level H2 is skipped."

who are these people, anyway?  and what will happen if i skip a level?
browsers show it exactly the way i want, but will it fail strict validation
or something?

what i have in mind is --

   <h1>main heading</h1>
   <h5>synopsis:</h5><p>short paragraph</p>
   <h4>bread > crumb > trail</h4>
   <h3>first subheading</h3>
   <p>foo</p>
   <h3>second subheading</h3>
   <p>bar</p>

seems to me a lot simpler than trying to fiddle all the necessary
properties in a style sheet just to get the H numbers in the right order
without skipping any...  and it works more or less as intended in non-css
browsers, too...

the w3c also says

   " ... H1 as the most important and H6 as the least. Visual browsers
      usually render more important headings in larger fonts than less
      important ones."

which pretty much supports my usage, because what i want under my h1 is
approximately of h5 importance

also, there's a neat new selector feature of css2 i've been wanting to try
that would go really well with my h5 --

     H5+P { font-size: x-small }

this will change the font size to x-small in any paragraph which
immediately follows an h5 (if i understand it right -- haven't actually
tested it yet)


so, who was it again who said the H numbers have to be consecutive and
descending?


rudy.ca