[whatwg] editorial ambiguity in definition of <nav>?

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Mon Jul 13 03:37:22 PDT 2009


On Thu, 18 Jun 2009, Bruce Lawson wrote:
>
> Spec says
> 
> "The nav element represents a section of a page that links to other pages or
> to parts within the page: a section with navigation links. Not all groups of
> links on a page need to be in a nav element — only sections that consist of
> primary navigation blocks are appropriate for the nav element."
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/semantics.html#the-nav-element
> 
> "Primary navigation blocks" is ambiguous, imo. A page may have two nav blocks;
> the first is site-wide naviagtion ("primary navigation") and within-page
> links, eg a table of contents which many would term "secondary nav".
> 
> Because of the use of the phrase "primary navigation block" in the spec, a
> developer may think that her secondary nav should not use a <nav> element.
> 
> Suggest rewording along the lines of "only sections that consist of blocks
> whose primary purpose is navigation around the page or within the site are
> appropriate for the nav element, so - for example - lists of links to
> sponsors/ advertisers would not be marked up as nav elements."

I fixed this by just changing "primary" to "major".

I've also added an example of secondary navigation using <nav>.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


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