[thelist] semantic markup

apathetic timbooker at gmail.com
Thu May 27 13:44:12 CDT 2004


I have to agree that HTML itself doesn't have much scope for
navigation that isn't contextual.  The only navigation which fits with
the semantic mark-up ideal is that which is integral to the body text
of a document.

What we really need is some way of creating navigation which stands
structurally apart from content in a clean way.  (Ever heard of a tag
called frameset?)

One could argue an approach which would see a page structured thus:

<div id="navigation"></div>
<div id="header"></div>
<div id="content"></div>
<div id="footer"></div>

Remember, id and class attributes are themselves semantic.  So, a
document with that structure, arguably, goes some way towards solving
the issue.  I think we all know that, really, it's not terribly
important whether we make the absolute distinction between navigation
and content.  It's an enjoyable discussion, however, from which we
learn.

Tim


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