[whatwg] Use of article to identify the main content of a web page (was Re: A plea to Hixie to adopt <main>)

[Charles McCathie Nevile]

On Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:38:26 +0100, Ian Yang <ian at invigoreight.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Steve Faulkner  
> <faulkner.steve at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi Ian,
>>
>> hixies suggestion to use article to act as a main content identifier  
>> [3] is
>> incorrect, as per the HTML spec [1]
>>
>> The article element represents a self-contained composition in a  
>> document,
>> > page, application, or site and that is, in principle, independently
>> > distributable or reusable, e.g. in syndication. This could be a forum
>> post,
>> > a magazine or newspaper article, a blog entry, a user-submitted  
>> comment,
>> an
>> > interactive widget or gadget, or any other independent item of  
>> content.
>> >
>>
>> The main element as per the main  element spec [2]:
>>
>> The main element represents the main content section of the body of a
>> > document or application. The main content section consists of content
>> that
>> > is directly related to or expands upon the central topic of a  
>> document or
>> > central functionality of an application.
>> >
>>
>> The article and main roles as defined in ARIA  have distinct
>> characteristics and those distinctions are also expressed via  how they
>> (and the article element) are exposed via accessibility APIs in  
>> browsers.
>>
>> [1]
>> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/the-article-element.html#the-article-element
>> [2]
>> https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-extensions/raw-file/tip/maincontent/index.html
>> [3]
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Nov/0221.html
>>
>
>
> Thanks Steve for explanation. Could you please suggest an appropriate
> element for the wrapper of the content of a blog post?

I'm not Steve. But I've been looking at the proposal. So IMHO...

If it is a single post on a page, you could wrap it in article or in main.
If it is a forum, where multiple threads are displayed, you would wrap
each in article. Main would cover the collection of threads on the page
(but not the navigation etc.)

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
         chaals at yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com