[thelist] replace <b> with <strong> (why dont use b tag)]

[Kevin B. O'Brien]

At 01:55 PM 7/31/2002 -0700, Hassan Schroeder said something remarkably
like (but somehow subtly different from):

>The Web certainly deserves to be better structured, semantically,
>but for most of us it's /still/ a medium with *visual* elements.

Well, yes, it mostly is. The W3C standards are meant, in part, to make it a
medium that is also useful for people who do not relate it to it visually.
The other thing that is worth thinking about is that the visual language is
not necessarily the same for all people. A lot of it is culturally
determined. An example I use when I am teaching this to students is to ask
them "What is the color of mourning?" To anyone raised in my culture
(European-based), the answer is "black". But as I have reason to know, in
Vietnam it is white. What other things are culture-specific? Does italic
type imply emphasis to a non-European, for instance?

That is why it is not a good idea to imply, through a visual language, what
can be stated explicitly. Which is the whole point to using <strong>
instead of <b>. One implies something and expects you to figure it out, the
other says it directly.


--
Kevin B. O'Brien         TANSTAAFL
ahuka at ahuka.com
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."  -- Winston
Churchill

Help fight SPAM. Join CAUCE. http://www.cauce.org/