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Re: Navigation lists and headers - best practise?

for

From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Aug 28, 2007 12:50PM

> Not that Jukka needs anyone to come to his defense, but it seems like
> you're
> trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

If course! But, alas, that's rarely possible with the current state of
standards. ;o)

> To argue for the use of a "definition list" as
> being
> for anything *other* than for a list of terms and definitions is
> without a
> doubt a use of the definition list for a purpose it was not intended
to
> serve.

There is no semantic tag for navigation labels. As such, whether one
uses a header or a dl would be easily argued the same in terms of
semantics or lack thereof.

Given the rather rudimentary set of tags we have to work with, we make
do.

I think I could argue either case in terms of which would be more
semantic in this case. It's just that at the moment, I like the DL
format.

> To me, this is simply further evidence that definition
> lists
> were intended solely to mark up that which their name pretty explictly
> states: definitions.

Interesting that the W3c felt that it was very important to have a list
of words and their definitions, but not navigation on a site. ;o)

> Despite the fact that a definition list appears highly appropriate for
> any
> list of key->value pairs or semantic grouping of like items, that was
> not
> their intent.

Fair enough. That said, if you read the description header tags, I could
come to the exact same conclusion that they never intended it for
grouping/labeling navigation. In the end, the specs are vague enough
that anyone willing enough could argue their case.

I'm not saying H2 tags are wrong...just that they are no right/less
wrong from a semantic standpoint in this context. From an accessibility
standpoint, it sounds like the header tags are preferred.

-Darrel