[whatwg] Question on (new) header and hgroup

[Ian Hickson]

On Sat, 6 Jun 2009, Kornel Lesinski wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Jun 2009 04:00:28 +0100, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> 
> > I don't think <hgroup> will be used often enough to justify calling it
> > just <h>.
> 
> Ok, but what about <subheader>? (<subtitle>, <tagline>?)
> 
> The purpose of <hgroup> is to imply that <hx> is a subtitle. That's quite an
> indirection. An explicit element would be easier to understand:
> 
> <h1>Dr. Strangelove</h1>
> <subheader>Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb<subheader>
> 
> Also it could accept only phrasing content, so it would be easier for
> validators to catch when authors confuse it with <header>.
> 
> It doesn't require changes to styling of <hx>, and can be given appropriate
> size with "h1 + subheader" CSS selector.

That would have been another option (it wouldn't handle multiple-level 
subheadings well, but that's not a big deal), but I'm not really convinced 
it's enough of an improvement to change the way the spec is written. It 
also has poorer graceful degradation behaviour, IMHO.

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