[whatwg] scope attribute on td

James Graham jg307 at cam.ac.uk
Thu Jan 31 11:15:44 PST 2008


Keryx Web wrote:
> James Graham skrev:
>> FWIW the HTML 4 behavior which turns a <td scope="somthing"> into a 
>> heading from the point of view of the UA is, in principle, useful 
>> since there are cases (particularly for row headings) where one cell 
>> is effectively both data and a heading but the formatting should be 
>> data-like rather than heading like.
> 
> I use TH for those cases and fix the formatting with CSS...
> 
> To keep the scope attribute for formatting purposes is a really bad 
> argument, IMHO. If an element is "turned into" a heading it should be 
> marked up as a heading.

That's not what HTML 4 says, FWIW.

More importantly, for "semantic markup" to have any value at all, it has to be 
used by authors in a consistent way that UAs can rely on. Therefore, if authors 
were inclined to use <td scope> rather than <th> to denote a particular subset 
of headers it should be supported for that use (even if the authors are 
essentially doing it for presentational reasons). In this particular case, 
authors don't seem to be using it (at least not correctly), so I see no point in 
supporting <td scope>.


-- 
"Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end?"
  -- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead



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