[whatwg] Giving the <body> tag a new meaning.

Tue Mar 1 13:59:01 PST 2011

Let me put it in others words. Following the last example.

Here is the way i see it,
Everything inside a word document IS CONTENT (not body). In that document we
may have or not a header, or a footer, but we always "should" have a body,
in this word document, for convenience purposes text by default is intended
to be body (hence no need to mark it as that).

In HTML, as you say, everything by default is body (about the same a a word
document). But the thing is that in HTML5, WE ARE making distinctions among
*header* and *footer* content. My only counter here is why aren't we making
distinctions of body content too?

Is this semantic to you?
<body>
    <header></header>
    <footer></footer>
</body>
There is an obvious (may be not dangerous) semantic issue there. Why in the
world a footer can be inside a body, aren't they siblings of a document?

To me (but hope you too), something semantic would be this:
<content>
    <header></header>
    <body></body>
    <footer></footer>
</content>

I've been requested to solve a problem. Former has never been a problem, web
as worked well in that way. I just am setting out a new way of thinking
about html. Being more declarative.

2011/3/1 Ashley Sheridan <ash at ashleysheridan.co.uk>

>  On Tue, 2011-03-01 at 12:32 -0800, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 12:09 PM, usuario <soyhobo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The real issue is with change, never is too late.
> > Many of the new elements in html5 are for semantic purposes. Being now a
> > <header> and a <footer>, there is only one left thing that's pretty obvious.
> >
> > I am not proposing the body tag for disappear, but allow it for a new
> > implementation. And perhaps in say 10 years, discontinue it as document
> > start element, when the change be widely spread.
> >
> > The reason? a better semantics advantages.
>
> So, what is the problem you're trying to solve?  Semantics are useless
> on their own; we only care about semantics insofar as they help us to
> solve problems.  For example, the new sectioning elements help
> somewhat in styling and code readability, and make the page easier to
> automatically navigate, so things like screen-readers can consume the
> pages more easily.
>
> What problem is caused by the current <body> tag that you'd like to fix?
>
> It may be helpful to read
> <http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#Is_there_a_process_for_adding_new_features_to_a_specification.3F>,
> which explains the process by which we add new features to HTML.
>
> ~TJ
>
>
> I agree.
>
> Usuario, in the example you've given the newly proposed version of the
> <body> tag only encloses content that isn't otherwise encompassed by the
> <header> or <footer>, meaning it serves no purpose to distinguish it from
> the header and footer because those specific tags are already doing that.
>
> The body tag holds all the content that is presented to the user. After a
> long look at a wide variety of websites, the <header> and <footer> (among
> other) tags were added to mark those areas of a website out against the
> actual content. This basically means that anything that isn't a header or a
> footer is main content. Of course there are things like <article> and
> <section> to further break things down.
>
> Think about it a bit like a word-processed document for a moment. In that,
> all content is deemed to be main content apart from page headers and footers
> which can be added in. Within the content you can mark up various text as a
> header or otherwise. A web page isn't too dissimilar, although it allows for
> far more semantic meaning to be given to content. What you must remember is
> that the new HTML5 tags aren't just for easier styling but to allow better
> parsing by non-humans, be it a search engine, screen reader or some content
> archiver.
>
>   --
> Thanks,
> Ash
> http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
>
>
>