My question is probably based on a bad design. However, I can't change that and need to work with it. This is the visual draft I'm talking about, it's just a part of a full website:
As you can see there's a title of an article with a background image, then a breadcrumb toolbar and finally, the articles content. Now, usually, if there wouldn't be the breadcrumb toolbar you could simply wrap it into an <article>. But the breadcrumb divides the article in a "pre" article and a main article part. The only "clean" HTML5 way would be to wrap the article including the header with background image into an <article> and position the breadcrumb into the target visual position. However, I'm classifying this as "hack" and I'm searching a better way.
What would be the preferred markup for this scenario?
There won't be any perfect the solution for the current requirement.
As pointed out by comments to the previous answer, the nav is not related to the article.
Also, WCAG instructs that :
1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence: When the sequence in which content is presented affects its meaning, a correct reading sequence can be programmatically determined. (Level A)
EDIT : If changing the order of the element can preserve a meaningful sequence (G57), when the elements does not match visually the DOM order (see C27) the visual focus indicator of the screen reader will not match the standard reading order which will result in bad UX for people with low vision using a screenreader.
So it's impossible to try a CSS visual hack to invert the order between the elements visually without breaking another rule.
You may think of a third technique :
set aria-hidden on the visible title,
use aria-labelledby on the article tag to point to the h1 outside the article element :
For instance:
<header>
<h1 aria-hidden="true" id="title">Your title</h1>
<nav><!-- nav here --></nav>
</header>
<article aria-labelledby="title">
// article here
</article>
Another way to do is to duplicate the title element, one visible, one for assistive technology
<header>
<div aria-hidden="true">Your title</div>
<nav><!-- nav here --></nav>
</header>
<article>
<h1 class="sr-only">Your title</h1>
// article here
</article>
It could be something like this -
<article>
<header>
//APPLY BACKGROUND IMAGE
<h1>YOUR TITLE</h1>
</header>
<nav>
//USE BREADCRUMBS HERE
</nav>
<section>
//USE THIS FOR CONTENT
</section>
</article>
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I've been using an html5 doctype for a while now but haven't really been using many more tags than header, nav and footer. I would like to understand when to implement the article and aside tags and if in my example I am implementing them correctly.
The entire reason that I ask this question is because there seems to be a lot of controversy on how exactly they should be used and whether certain tags like the aside tag can be nested within the article tag. I'm just looking for clarity here.
Here is my example. I have 2 questions:
Is there anything about this layout that is incorrect?
Can I style aside these new tags or do I have to apply styles to the elements within the new html5 tags?
<header>
</header>
<main>
<article id="article">
<div id="full">
<aside id="page-left">
<div>
<h1>title</h1>
<p>content</p>
</div>
</aside>
<aside id="page-right">
<div>
<h2>title</h2>
<p>content</p>
</div>
</aside>
</div>
</article>
</main>
<footer>
</footer>
EDIT:
What I am after is simply a wrapper div that was changed to an article tag that will contain 2 inline elements. The left element will contain the actual article and the right side will contain testimonials.
What would the correct tags be in this case?
From W3C:
--
The article element represents a complete, or 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. Each article should be identified, typically by including a heading (h1-h6 element) as a child of the article element.
A general rule is that the article element is appropriate only if the element's contents would be listed explicitly in the document's outline.
--
The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography.
The element can be used for typographical effects like pull quotes or sidebars, for advertising, for groups of nav elements, and for other content that is considered separate from the main content of the page.
--
So I would not put the article content inside an aside tag.
more here
One would normally put ads and other stuff that has nothing - or less - to do with the article, in aside tags. I can't tell you if you're using them properly since only you can decide whats necessary and what's not. But I guess you're using them fine. just make sure you don't put important stuff in them because google and other search engines won't show anything in aside tags in your websites description
EDIT: this is how - I think - your example should look:
</header>
<main>
<div id="full">
<article id="page-left">
<div>
<h1>title</h1>
<p>content</p>
</div>
</article>
<aside id="page-right">
<div>
<h2>title</h2>
<p>content</p>
</div>
</aside>
</div>
</main>
<footer>
</footer>
I am coding up a landing page with the classical setup :
A fixed header
Several sections (product description, testimonials, google map, etc.)
A footer
My semantics look like this :
<header>
<!-- Responsive navigation bar -->
</header>
<section class="section-first">
<!-- First section -->
</section>
<section>
</section>
...
<footer>
</footer>
As the header is fixed, I need a specific CSS treatment on the first section, as such :
.section-first {
margin-top: 200px;
}
so that the header and the first section do not overlap. So eventually my first section needs to be treated differently than others. My current approach seems like a tweak to me, there should be either a semantical way to approach this or a clean CSS market practice in such common situation. Any ideas ?
You could use the :first-of-type pseudo element!
section:first-of-type{
margin-top:200px;
}
This finds the first section tag in your HTML without having to add an extra class to it and only applies the written styles to that one.
I have been working with a lot of html structuring lately and I started to wonder what are the elements that are allowed as children of an <a> element?
Anything as long as there insn't any interactive content like buttons, forms, other link...
w3.org HTML5 specs :
The a element may be wrapped around entire paragraphs, lists, tables, and so forth, even entire sections, so long as there is no interactive content within (e.g. buttons or other links).
see link to source
And here is an example of what you can do (still form w3.org) :
<aside class="advertising">
<h1>Advertising</h1>
<a href="http://ad.example.com/?adid=1929&pubid=1422">
<section>
<h1>Mellblomatic 9000!</h1>
<p>Turn all your widgets into mellbloms!</p>
<p>Only $9.99 plus shipping and handling.</p>
</section>
</a>
<a href="http://ad.example.com/?adid=375&pubid=1422">
<section>
<h1>The Mellblom Browser</h1>
<p>Web browsing at the speed of light.</p>
<p>No other browser goes faster!</p>
</section>
</a>
</aside>
Changes in HTML5
Although previous versions of HTML restricted the a element to only containing phrasing content (essentially, what was in previous versions referred to as “inline” content), the a element is now transparent; that is, an instance of the a element is now allowed to also contain flow content (essentially, what was in previous versions referred to as “block” content)—if the parent element of that instance of the a element is an element that is allowed to contain flow content.
HTML language reference
I read about semantic HTML online...
Semantic HTML means using HTML tags for their implied meaning, rather than just using (meaningless) div and span tags for absolutely everything.
If you use <h1> instead of <div class="header">, and <h2> instead of , et cetera, Google and other search engines will interpret your headers as being important titles in your page. This way, when people search on the words in your headers and sub-headers, your page will be considered more relevant (and rank higher). Plus, it's much shorter and cleaner.
So, below is semantic,
<h1>My Website Name</h1>
<h2>My Website Tagline </h2>
What about this below?
<div id="header">
<h1><span class="hide">My Website Name</span></h1>
<h2><span class="hide">My Website Tagline</span></h2>
</div>
I tend to combine h tags with div and span tags like above - is this practised considered as the lack of semantic?
The reason why I have the span with the hide class is that I want to display the site logo instead of text. So use CSS to set the background of h1 as image and then hide the text. is this incorrect practise?
Then, if I don't use div, what can I use to make a box around the h1 and h2?
As far as I know, html 5 is not fully ready yet, we must not use <header> yet, must we??
Thanks.
I would do something like the following if I was going to use HTML5:
<header>
<hgroup>
<h1>My Website Name</h1>
<h2>My Website Tagline</h2>
</hgroup>
</header>
Remember to add display: block; to the HTML5 elements and createElement for IE in the CSS though. The header element shows the block is a header and the hgroup element is there to show that the second h* element is a sub heading, so shouldn't be taken into account when calculating the header levels in the document.
If you don't want to use HTML5 yet then you could use divs instead of the new elements, and use the HTML5 element names as the class value. This will make it easier to switch over when you feel comfortable using HMTL5 on a live site.
You don't really need to use the span elements. You can use tricks such as using a large negative text-indent in the CSS to hide the text off the screen.
If you want to display a logo instead of text, use an image. Google say so (even if they don't know the difference between a tag and an attribute). Taglines, BTW, are not subheadings (and the site name (and thus logo) is usually only a heading on the homepage).
<div id="header">
<h1><img src="foo.png" alt="My Website Name"></h1>
<p><img src="foo.png" alt="My Website Tagline"></p>
</div>
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 8 does not recognize many HTML5 tags, and when I've tested it, I was unable to set CSS values for the <header> tag, for example. So for now I would recommend that you continue to use div tags to group your semantic meaning.
As a sidenote, Google does not like hidden text, and if you have a lot of it, it will consider it deceptive coding. One is probably fine, but you'd be better off using the alt attribute on the image tag.
Nobody suggested that you should not use DIVs at all... semantic HTML does not mean there cannot be div or span tags in your code. It just only means that whenever possible (there is a specific tag available for a specific semantic meaning) you should try to give semantic meaning.
h2 is not to be used for taglines, as somebody else already suggested.
Also, in my interpretation (some will argue), h1 is not for the name of your website. It is the title for the content on a specific page.
I agree with #David Dorward, the tag line should be in a p tag.
Your example (wrapping the header elements with a div) is perfectly acceptable, though I would like to raise a small caution: Be careful that you do not get in the habit of wrapping everything in div tags. For example:
<div class="content">
<div class="list">
<ul>
<li>something</li>
<li>something</li>
<li>something</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
Since a ul tag is already a block element, the above markup would be better off like this:
<div class="content">
<ul class="list">
<li>something</li>
<li>something</li>
<li>something</li>
</ul>
</div>
And then just style the ul to look like the div.
On the matter of displaying the logo as an image:
If your logo is text-based, or has text in it, you would be better off doing the following:
HTML
<div id="header">
<h1 class="logo">My Logo Text - My Website Tagline</h1>
</div>
CSS
.logo { text-indent:-9999px;background-image:url(thelogo.jpg) no-repeat;}
/* Also add height and width based on your logo height and width */
I know that it's incorrect to style a <section> tag but how about the <header> and <footer> tags. If using these tags provides a more semantic markup then they should be used, however, if they can't be styled then a <div> would still need to be inserted inside the tag to wrap the content and style it.
I know that <header> can be styled but I'm not sure if it's correct to do so.
So the question is: Should html5 tags be styled or should a <div> be placed inside to take care of the styling?
Nothing in the spec says you can't or shouldn't style HTML5 elements such as <section> or <article>. It only says that you shouldn't place a semantic HTML5 element somewhere 'for the sake of' styling something. Use a <div> instead.
So if you have a semantic reason to add the <section> or <article> somewhere, then by all means add it AND also feel free to style it as well. But if you have to wrap a section of your mark-up for styling purposes (eg. to add a border, or float left etc.), but that section does not have any semantic meaning in your mark-up, then use a <div>.
For instance:
<div class="mainBox">
<nav class="breadcrumbs">
<ol>
<li>...list of links (snip)....</li>
</ol>
</nav>
<section>
<h1>Latest Tweets From Twitter</h1>
<article>
//... a Tweet (snip)... //
</article>
<article>
//... a Tweet (snip)... //
</article>
//... lots more Twitter posts (snip)... //
</section>
</div>
The <section> element is the main part of your page (ie. your list of tweets) and also has a heading at the start which is required. But it's wrapped in a div.mainBox element because maybe you want to wrap a border around the both the breadcrumbs and section parts, ie. it's purely for styling. But there's nothing to stop you styling the <section> and <article> elements also.
It's is not incorrect to style these tags, but they are not solely for styling purposes as they serve a semantic function. By all means style the elements that you need to use, but don't add them to achieve styles thereby ruining the semantics.
Having said that you must also beware of styling them as they are not recognised by all browsers. For example IE6 and 7 will not apply the styles as they won't recognise the element names. You can get around this in IE7 using ARIA tags which will allow you some styling control.