On web semantics

[snakeair]

I think I just got a headache from reading this blog post from the Google blog. I'm not a programmer by trade so I tend to like things dumbed down into simple to understand words and pictures. lol

Check this out.

In web development context, semantics refers to semantic markup, which means markup used according to its meaning and purpose.

Markup used according to its purpose means using heading elements (for instance, h1 to h6) to mark up headings, paragraph elements (p) for paragraphs, lists (ul, ol, dl, also datalist or menu) for lists, tables for data tables, and so on.

Stating the obvious became necessary in the old days, when the Web consisted of only a few web sites and authors used tables to code entire sites, table cells or paragraphs for headings, and thought about other creative ways to achieve the layout they wanted. (Admittedly, these authors had fewer instruments at their disposal than authors have today. There were times when coding a three column layout was literally impossible without using tables or images.)

Up until today authors were not always certain about what HTML element to use for what functional unit in their HTML page, though, and “living” specs like HTML 5 require authors to keep an eye on what elements will be there going forward to mark up what otherwise calls for “meaningless” fallback elements like div or span.

To know what elements HTML offers, and what meaning these elements have, it’s necessary to...

Continued at: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...semantics.html

I think if I read this a few more times, I'll sink in better. Any thoughts so far on the blog post?

[GMF]

Originally Posted by snakeair

I think I just got a headache from reading this blog post from the Google blog. I'm not a programmer by trade so I tend to like things dumbed down into simple to understand words and pictures. lol

K, dumbed down version? No problem:

Author-controlled semantics

Use functional ID and class names; if that is not possible, use generic ID and class names.

It is almost always possible to give an ID/CLASS a functional name. If you don't, someone will drown a bag of cats.

Advantages of using semantic markup

Using markup according to how it’s meant to be used, as well as modest use of functional ID and class names, has several advantages:

It’s the professional thing to do.
It’s more accessible.
It’s more maintainable.

You don't use it according to how it’s meant? More cats will die.

Special cases
b - whenever you use it, a kitty dies
strong - strong importance for its contents
i - whenever you use it, a kitty dies
em - stress emphasis of its contents

more "bad" tags

http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlintermediate/badtags/

Suggestion: Head over to htmldog.com and work through the courses. He pretty much nails the accessibility thing (and he wrote it back in 2003)

[ijujym]

Imho: Semantics web is all about adding new descriptive elements ( like semantics="name", or similar to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdata_(HTML) ) to the html tags, so robots would know what type of data is inside the tag. A good source of information on topics like RDFA and SPARQL is w3.org ( w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer w3.org/TR/sparql11-overview )