[html5] Template questions...

[Jukka K. Korpela]

16.5.2011 3:54, Micky Hulse kirjoitti:

> <header>
> <h1><!-- Site logo/flag here --></h1>
> </header>
>
> If we were to consider this to be the primary logo for the
> template/website, what are your thoughts about making this an<h6>? I
> have always used<h6>  for the site logo, for example:

It is difficult to say which idea is more wrong.

A site logo is not a heading for a page. You would be using the same 
content as the main heading of _each page_ of a site, which is absurd, 
confusing, and bad for the way search engines will treat you. A site 
logo can of course be, and it very often is, part of the _header_ of a 
page - this is traditional, and HTML5 just adds specific _markup_ for 
the header. But headers and headings are different things.

A site logo isn't a 6th-rank heading either. In pre-HTML5 markup, <h6> 
always means 6th-rank (or 6th-level) heading with respect to the entire 
page. Does that make sense? What would be the deeply nested element that 
it is a heading for?

> <header>
> <h6><a href="http://site.com">Site Name</a>  Slogan</h6>
> </header>

Well, that's not about a logo but about name and slogan. But similar 
considerations apply. There is no reason to use any heading markup for 
it, as it is not a heading for the page or part thereof - rather, it is 
part of a header, presumably used consistently across pages of the site. 
It needs no special markup as such, though for styling or scripting 
purposes, you _can_ wrap it inside <div>, <span>, <p>, or perhaps 
something else. But not a heading, please.

> But maybe I can change my thinking about the logo's importance in an
> HTML5 document?

This is not about importance. You're not supposed to indicate the 
importance of elements by the use of heading elements - such attempts 
date back to the mid-1990s, when heading markup was the only way to make 
texts appear in different sizes. I'm talking about the _old_ times here, 
before the invention of <font>. It's time to let those times and the 
old-time use of heading markup go.

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/