[whatwg] New attributes would degrade better than new elements

[Nils Dagsson Moskopp]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela at cs.tut.fi> schrieb am Wed, 26 Oct 2011
22:38:06 +0300:

> New elements like <nav> and <footer> have the problem that some
> existing user agents don't recognize them, even for the purposes of
> styling. So if you want to use <nav>, then - unless you're using it
> for purely semantic reasons with no idea of styling - you need to use
> some special trick to make old browsers recognize it or assign your
> styles to some logically redundant <div> markup that you use in
> addition to <nav>.
> 
> Therefore, it would be much simpler, for compatibility with existing 
> user agents, to use just <div type=nav> and <div type=footer>. Such 
> elements can be styled at will, and if any browsers or search engines 
> wish to recognize semantic markup, type=nav should not be a bigger 
> problem than <nav>, rather smaller.
> 
> I understand that this should have been suggested years ago. But I 
> didn't think of the issue, and it seems that neither did anyone else, 
> aloud. And it's not too late, is it?

I'd argue it is: <http://caniuse.com/html5semantic>

-- 
Nils Dagsson Moskopp // erlehmann
<http://dieweltistgarnichtso.net>