L
Leif K-Brooks
Why are <big> and <small> better than <font>, and why on earth are they
included in the strict DTD?
included in the strict DTD?
I know that. My question is why <small> and <big> are any better thanGeoff said:The font element is deprecated, to remove presentational markup from HTML
and XHTML. Font adjustments should be suggested using CSS.
Leif K-Brooks said:
Exactly what I thought, which is why I don't understand why they're inKris said:They are not. They suck. As Jeff said, use CSS for presentational
details. CSS rocks your mom when applied to struturally rich HTML. <big>
and <small> are not that.
Leif K-Brooks said:Exactly what I thought, which is why I don't understand why they're in
the strict DTD. Just noticed <i> and <b> are there too... now I'm
confused.
How do they affect text semantically?Geoff said:The i and b elements are there not because of how they affect the text
presentationally, but rather how they affect it semantically. In other
words, not because the i element italicizes text, but because it changes
the meaning of the text in some way (which is not possible with CSS).
How do they affect text semantically?
I answered this already. I said that they change the meaning of the text in
some way. For example, the reason for the bold element might be to
emphasize the text more.
Leif said:How do they affect text semantically?
However, the <i> is still of not semantic. It doesn't say "this is aJoel said:In some fields it's common to use italics or other presentational
devices to denote proper names. Ship names are frequently italicized or
upper-cased, in biology genus and species names are frequently
italicized, and so on. There's no <ship> or <genus> tag in HTML, so <i>
suffices. Use of <i> for this purpose is more appropriate than <span>,
as the author is not *suggesting* the name be italicized for sake of
appearance; but rather it is imperative the name be italicized (or
highlighted in some other way) to denote its semantic significance.
E.g., lack of stylesheet support should not reduce one's ability to
properly comprehend "Harry S. Truman pulled out of Bremerton today",
"Harry S. Truman" being the name of a ship in this context, not the
historic personage, "Bremerton" being the name of the city in Washington
State, not the ship.
"Harry S. Truman pulled out of Bremerton today",
Nonsense. The <b> and <i> elements are completely without semantics, which
is why they have been removed from XHTML as of XHTML 2.0.
Geoff Ball said:alt.html:
Refer to Joel's post <for a
perfect example of when the i element would be appropriate.
Toby A Inkster said:<em class="ship">Harry S Truman</em> pulled out of Bremerton today.
<em> is more appropriate than <i>, because it conveys meaning to
non-visual browsers, and browser that otherwise do not support italic
typefaces.
Toby A Inkster said:<em class="ship">Harry S Truman</em> pulled out of Bremerton today.
<em> is more appropriate than <i>, because it conveys meaning to
non-visual browsers, and browser that otherwise do not support italic
typefaces.
Toby said:<em class="ship">Harry S Truman</em> pulled out of Bremerton today.
<em> is more appropriate than <i>, because it conveys meaning to
non-visual browsers, and browser that otherwise do not support italic
typefaces.
I put it to you that italicising is merely a method of emphasis. Mr
Webster seems to agree with me:
[tai@ophelia (pts/3) ~]$ dict italics
1 definition found
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Italic \I*tal"ic\, n.; pl. {Italics}. (Print.)
An Italic letter, character, or type (see {Italic}, a., 2.);
-- often in the plural; as, the Italics are the author's.
Italic letters are used to distinguish words for emphasis,
importance, antithesis, etc. Also, collectively, Italic
letters.
I actually do this, but only specifying font-style. What is the
benefit to specifying font-weight:inherit, as opposed to not
specifying font-weight at all?
However, the <i> is still of not semantic.
Lauri said:Well, with what do you expect people replace italics for emphasis? I
think most logical is bold. You could do same for colors too.
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