logo in h1

[Bart van den Burg]

Hi

I was wondering: Lately, I see myself more and more often putting logo
images in H1 tags, for example: http://dareaper.blowlands.nl/Alex/ which is
a site for a friend of mine (he made it himself, but i didn't agree with the
fact that he was using HTML 4.01 Transitional with tables for layout, so i
made this one, with a few changes).
As you can see, the logo is in an H1. My teacher once said to a classmate,
that he thought it was quite useless and not advised to do so. I was busy
with something else so i didn't ask about it.

Currently, the site outline is:
Alexander in Australië
inpakken
zondag 26 oktober, ergens in de langste nacht, Enschede
ere wie eer bekomt
zaterdag 25 oktober, Enschede
startschot
vrijdag 24 oktober, Enschede

"Alexander in Australië" being the 'alt' of the <img> tag of the logo

IMO, it's okay to do this.
Can I have opinions on this?

thanks
Bart

 

[Eric Bohlman]

I was wondering: Lately, I see myself more and more often putting logo
images in H1 tags, for example: http://dareaper.blowlands.nl/Alex/
which is a site for a friend of mine (he made it himself, but i didn't
agree with the fact that he was using HTML 4.01 Transitional with
tables for layout, so i made this one, with a few changes).
As you can see, the logo is in an H1. My teacher once said to a
classmate, that he thought it was quite useless and not advised to do
so. I was busy with something else so i didn't ask about it.

In the site in question the logo plays the structural role of a top-level
heading, so it should indeed be marked up as one. The only reason it's an
image rather than text is to obtain a stylized look. If it had been done
in plain text, there would be no question that it was a top-level heading.

What's useless (actually worse than useless) is taking something that is
not structurally a heading and marking it up as one simply to get a typical
browser default presentation for a heading.

 

[Woolly Mittens]

As you can see, the logo is in an H1. My teacher once said to a classmate,
that he thought it was quite useless and not advised to do so.

That's why he was removed from the real world and made into a teacher.
Google will take the alt-tag of the image as a heading, and give it a higher
importance.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Lately, I see myself more and more often putting
logo images in H1 tags

There's a recent discussion thread on the WAI list on such a question:
http://www.webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=1646
The short answer is that it's OK, and recommendable, _if_
the logo is actually used as a _heading_ for the specific page.
This seems to be case on your page. On the other hand, the logo is
relatively simple and could mostly be achieved using just <h1> with
text and auxiliary (<span>) markup inside it, if you use some CSS. (You
don't get _quite_ that effect in current CSS, but using vertical-align
creatively and some normal color and font properties would give a
reasonable result.)

As you can see, the logo is in an
H1. My teacher once said to a classmate, that he thought it was
quite useless and not advised to do so.

Quick question: if you don't make the logo an <h1>, what _will_ you
make an <h1>? Normally a page should have an overall heading.
(BTW, I cannot help mentioning that the "external heading",
i.e. the <title> element, with content "log", hardly satisfies the
basic requirement that it is understandable in any context even without
reference to the body of the page.)

 

[Kris]

As you can see, the logo is in an H1. My teacher once said to a classmate,
that he thought it was quite useless and not advised to do so.

That's why he was removed from the real world and made into a teacher.
Google will take the alt-tag of the image as a heading, and give it a higher
importance.[/QUOTE]

What's the use of a company's name in a H1? A H1 is supposed to be a
title for the page content and I doubt that every page in a company's
site is about the corporate name.

Something like this would be more useful.

<img src="company_logo.gif" alt="Name of company">

<h1>Our products and services</h1>

But I may have missed something exceptional about this thread, who knows.