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RE: <em> v. <i> and <strong> v. <b>

for

From: Lori K. Brown
Date: Sep 5, 2003 9:47AM

Although this kind of pragmatism isn't typical of standards people, the
reason those two tags haven't been formally deprecated might just be the
practical fact that such deprecation would instantly render millions of
otherwise largely inoffensive web pages invalid. I mean, do you REALLY
think browsers are EVER going to stop rendering <b> and <i>?

I am switching from <b> and <i> to <strong> and <em> on what I call an
opportunistic basis: when I have other reasons to make changes to a page,
I replace <b> and <i> w/ <strong> and <em>. That way things get better,
but I am not obliged to stop all other work and go through all of my pages
to make this one somewhat nitpicky change.

Yes, there are sensible reasons to prefer the structural to the
'appearance' version of these tags, but the difference isn't going to
cause your pages to be unusable. There are much bigger problems out there.

And Jules, the problem w/ making the change isn't making it in new pages,
but swapping out the wrong tags in existing pages. That's always where the
headaches reside.

My $.02.

--
Lori K. Brown
User Interface Engineer
SiteScape, Inc.


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