[whatwg] <comment> and <ad> elements

Sun Sep 4 12:41:15 PDT 2011

I could say from a robots perspective, a comment tag might be useful since users sometimes want the option to view comments but not necessarily that as a default. 

For example many blogs/cmses offer a comment feed, also many news articles will have a default of no comments with a trigger to show comments. Also consider Discus as a model where comments and content are separated.

But I think from an author's perspective a "comment" tag would be confusing (they might think this is a revival of the ie method). The "commentary" tag might work, though it is a long tag + I feel like commentary implies something longer and more formal than a comment on the web. However, I can't think of any intuitive, more concise tag names.

- John Thomas

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Today's Topics:

   1. <comment> and <ad> elements (Shaun Moss)
   2. Re: <comment> and <ad> elements (Jukka K. Korpela)

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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:14:40 +1000
From: Shaun Moss <shaun at astromultimedia.com>
To: whatwg at lists.whatwg.org
Subject: [whatwg] <comment> and <ad> elements
Message-ID: <4E631750.4030606 at astromultimedia.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Hi all

I've joined this list to put forward the argument that there should be 
elements for <comment> and <ad> included in the HTML5 spec.

These are both extremely common features of many web pages; I would say 
at least as common as "article". At present there is no obvious semantic 
element for comments and ads. To use <article>, <section> or <aside> is 
a kludge at best.

I would love to hear people's thoughts on this idea, as I'm sure it 
would have been discussed before. Please also let me know the process 
for submitting a formal proposal to the WHATWG or the W3C about this.

I'm the founder and CEO of IWDA (International Web Development Academy), 
and currently writing a course in HTML5.

Thanks,
Shaun

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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:23:09 +0300
From: "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela at cs.tut.fi>
To: whatwg <whatwg at lists.whatwg.org>
Subject: Re: [whatwg] <comment> and <ad> elements
Message-ID: <4E63C20D.6090607 at cs.tut.fi>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

4.9.2011 9:14, Shaun Moss wrote:

> I've joined this list to put forward the argument that there should be
> elements for <comment> and <ad> included in the HTML5 spec.

IE recognized <comment> and ignored it in display, so it was like a 
comment declaration (). It seems that they dropped support 
at some stage (perhaps in IE 7). So maybe the old effect and usage would 
not disturb much, if you wanted to define a completely different 
semantic meaning for it. I guess what you mean is semantics like 'the 
content of this element is a commentary' (perhaps with a for=... 
attribute to indicate what it is a comment on?). But if introduced, I'd 
still call it <commentary>.

> These are both extremely common features of many web pages;

I have no strong feelings about this, but I don't think commonness is 
sufficient for introducing a markup element. For example, almost all 
HTML documents contain verbs, and yet nobody has proposed a <verb> 
element. Just ease of writing isn't really a good motive, especially 
since any new element would have the problem that some relevant browsers 
do not even let you style an element unknown to them - for example, if 
you wish to style <article>, you need to teach it to IE with a little 
JavaScript. It's simpler and safer to keep using <div class=article> for 
some years, no matter what people might write in the specs.

There's a real argument in favor of <article>: it lets robots detect 
pieces that might be eligible for syndication. What would <comment> be 
useful for?

For <ad>, there's the obvious potential usage of setting

ad { display: none !important }

in a user style sheet. I don't think this possibility would make <ad> 
popular among authors.

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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