[whatwg] wrapper element

usuario soyhobo at gmail.com
Mon Feb 28 10:46:10 PST 2011


[Had problems sending my mails to the list, resending message]

Some of you may be questioning why a wrapper element if it has not
semantics, the thing is, It DO have semantics.

Wrapper:
a container element whose solely purpose is to isolate flow content for
visually appealing purposes. It it usually used for applying margin, padding
to inner elements, and dimensionally separating them from its real parent.

*example, consider:*

<header>
    <div class="wrapper">
        <h1>Header 1</h1>
        <p>this content is centered because margin: 0 auto is applied to
parent of div.wraper element</p>
        I have always worked, I'm almost standard, sometimes people don't
call me wraper but 'container' or 'content' instead
    </div>
</header>

*Against:*

<header>
    <wrapper>
        <h1>Header 1</h1>
        <p>this content is centered because margin: 0 auto is applied to
parent of wrapper element</p>
        I think I'm more semantic because I'm specifically designed for this
task, and I do it very well. What do you think?
    </wrapper>
</header>

Moreover.

> Why not borrow the <g> from SVG (meaning "to group together" -- the
> semantics may be a bit more accessible in some cross-linguistic sense than
> <wrap>, particularly because of the silent "w" in "wrap" which throws a lot
> of folks for a loop)?
>

Don't know if that's the solution, i just don't discard it.


> <div> carries no semantic meaning. * If you are using it for such, the
> semantic is purely internal to your application*, and thus doesn't
> carry the common meaning of "semantics" as used on the web.
>

We have no problems with <div> definition. But i think you are not right in
your statement.
Answer this, Are wrappers purely internal to my(of mine) application? that's
a capitalized lie, just think on it. Most applications use a wrapper-like
div. You had, and i don't know you.

We have to start deciding what do we want from html5, at what degree do we
want a more semantic web? why just <header>, why just <footer>.

I can assure you the world was fine with <div id="header">, but so, why
<header> was created for? It was created because being so widely used,
somebody believed it was *more semantic* to convert it into an element.

<div> is the wrapper element.  That's its entire purpose for living.  ^_^
>

<div> was not creating for wrapping things, but for contain them. When you
wrap something, you are giving it a different implicit meaning to that
wrapper div.



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