[whatwg] Semantic markup for buzzwords

Alexey Feldgendler alexeyf at opera.com
Tue Apr 1 10:15:34 PDT 2008


On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:08:20 +0200, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com>  
wrote:

> I believe the current definition of the B element allows for such use:
>
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-b
>
> "The b element represents a span of text to be stylistically offset from  
> the normal prose without conveying any extra importance, such as key  
> words in a document abstract, product names in a review, or other spans  
> of text whose typical typographic presentation is boldened."

This describes <b> as a presentational element, but my proposal makes it  
semantic.

On Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:05:44 +0200, Brian Kardell <bkardell at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Can you please explain precisely how this would differ from <strong>  
> which really should work exactly as you described? Is it really mostly
> just the fact that some search engines don't accurately respect <strong>
> as being the essential equivalent of <b>? If so, then I would like to
> suggest that this might not be the best solution, and that suggesting
> some alternative tag for semantics isn't probably going to help solve
> this problem in any meaningful way since the recommendations that we
> have around now have been available for search engines to figure out
> and implement for longer than some of the engines themselves. Could you
> not achieve what you are looking for with meta tags or some alternative
> means?

Using a different tag name would suffer from the chicken-and-egg probem,  
and the advantage of <b> is that it's already widely used for exactly the  
purpose proposed.

> Just my 2 cents for what they are worth. Also - it is very possible that  
> I don't understand, if so could you expand?

Taking into account the very special date on which this discussion is  
happening should clarify matters.


-- 
Alexey Feldgendler <alexeyf at opera.com>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://my.opera.com/feldgendler/



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