Re: retooling and mental housecleaning

dorayme wrote:

OK. What are some of the main things puzzling you? The meaning of individual elements? How the meaning of some elements are more specific than others? Which elements have some significant meaning and which do not?

Bearing in mind I am trying to break bad habits as well as form new ones, yes. For instance, 15 years ago I never considered my navigation links as an unordered list, and it probably wasn't important since several structural approaches rendered the same effect. Now with the various non-visual UA's it impacts how a page is "rendered." So it is important enough for me to readdress my navigation bars. On the other hand, appropriate use of H# elements has never been an issue.

How much effort to put into avoiding basically meaningless containers like divs?


I don't want to be a zealot about it, I think I can decide when a div, a table, or even a span is OK, but I do think a more semantic approach in general will prevent unnecessary div propagation.

I need to do a comprehensive analysis, but my problem is that when I review new material for beginners, I have a tendency to read what is already in my mind, and not what is being expressed. I'm sure we all do that to some extent, but my particular disability exacerbates the problem. I certainly don't want to get into any black and white holy war that says things like "Though shalt not use tables (or divs, or spans, etc)", on the other hand I don't want to use them to compensate for poor markup. I use dl frequently for things that aren't strictly definition lists, but I'm not sure I understand all of the ramifications.

I respect the opinions of the people like you in this forum. Even when I disagree, I can usually improve my perspective. I have a feel for the mindset of some of the people here, and as a result can temper my own opinions. When I search for semantic html, I get lots of results, but have no way of evaluating their relevance, accuracy, or anything else. I'm even beginning to wonder if I'm sending myself on a snipe hunt.
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Mozilla Bug 915 "Resolved"
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    (comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html)
  • Re: 3-column liquid layout? (for thumbnails)
    ... You are right about the meaning and I did feel the way you did ... inline listed thumbs). ... display of block. ... just more divs. ...
    (comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets)
  • Re: Specific 3 column div issue
    ... misunderstanding of modern approaches to layout. ... Using only divs is just as bad as using only tables. ... need to understand the idea of separating layout from presentation. ... use should reflect the *meaning* of the content. ...
    (alt.html)
  • Re: Latex cannot find figure
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    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: Terrible!
    ... can't control the former. ... Uselessnet posts *generally* are not. ... We all offer opinions on things to each other all day long. ... But it ended up meaning nothing. ...
    (misc.writing)