The html attribute dir and the css text-align property acheive the same result. E.g. consider the two cases:
dir="rtl"
<p dir="rtl">
one two.
</p>
text-align: right
<p style="text-align: right;">
one two.
</p>
The only difference between these two results is the placement of dot. Why isn't <p dir="rtl"> one two. </p> translated to .owt eno? If it can't then what is the use of dir attribute at all?
The placement of the dot is the crucial point of the difference between dir and text-align. Handling right to left scripts is much more involved than handling the alignment of the text. To understand better, read
https://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/uba-basics
A sequence of rtl characters such as سلسلة نصية الذهاب works automatically because of the Unicode bidirectional algorithm relying on the character's directional properties, but you need more to properly handle punctuation, images, and bidirectional text.
bdi is an element, not an attribute name.
don't get bdi confused with bdo. The former applies heuristics to guess the direction of text, the latter overrides the bidirectional algorithm (and is very rarely used).
For a more complete picture about how to work with RTL (or actually bidirectional) text in html, see
https://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/bidi-xhtml/index
Related
Is it possible to transform a phrase to plural using just CSS, based on the number within the element?
I'm guessing this breaks a presentation/data separation boundary philosophy, but just wondering if it's possible. It's easy with JavaScript, but wondering if CSS can take care of it.
<span class="plural">0 book</span>
outputs: 0 books
<span class="plural">1 book</span>
outputs: 1 book
<span class="plural">2 book</span>
outputs: 2 books
No. CSS cannot read the content of the element to determine what number it is, and CSS doesn't have if conditions.
If you would only apply .plural to items that should be regularly pluralized, you could do:
.plural:after {content: "s"}
But then we run into the problem of how English is irregular, and not all plurals are guaranteed to end in "s".
Going to try answer this myself, as it seems a pure CSS solution is not possible. I've found a small workaround here that works for me. It's not ideal, but may work for others too..
I just render the number behind the plural class name and wrap this around the s. Then I use a class for plural1 that hides the s.
This works for me because I use templates to render my html and it's easy to slot the numbers in.
.plural1 {
display: none;
}
<div>-1 book<span class="plural-1">s</span>
</div>
<div>0 book<span class="plural0">s</span>
</div>
<div>1 book<span class="plural1">s</span>
</div>
<div>2 book<span class="plural2">s</span>
</div>
Pros: This can work for other endings and other languages too. Negative numbers are supported.
Cons: Adds unused classes to your elements (plural2, plural3, etc.) that the browser will need to read and ignore. Not really an issue for a small number of object though (eg. 100).
I'm playing around with word-wrap and white-space for a while now, but I cant get this to work. I want no word separation in my headings, so long words should just be put into the next line. To clearify this, if the container is too small, I dont want it to behave this way:
A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-
eeeeery long heading
I want it to be that way:
A
veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery
long heading
This is my markup:
<header>
<h3>Some random blog heading</a></h3>
</header>
CSS:
article h3{
width:200px;
word-wrap:normal;
word-break: normal;
white-space: nowrap;
}
I think I tried every possible combination, but it didnt do what I want. I cant imagine that it isnt possible.
If you currently see a word divided in two lines as in your first example and you don’t want that, you just have to locate the thing that causes the word division. This can be CSS hyphenation with the hyphen property, or it may be caused by the SOFT HYPHEN character (possibly inserted via scripting), or even a common hyphen character “-” in the word – most browsers treat it as allowing a line break after it.
If you need help with the analysis, I think you need to reveal some of the actual content and markup and perhaps styling and scripting.
Apply css on it
<div style="word-wrap:break-all;">A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long heading</div>
or
<div style="word-wrap:break-word;">A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long heading</div>
I am trying to learn fundamentals of html and markings.
I want to create an anchor which containes two lines of information.
first line: the name of the link
second line: short explanation
e.g.
<a href='#'>
<span>Studies</span>
<span class="alt">-Information about studies</span>
</a>
Is this correct?
How should the following (2nd span) be modified if necessary?
Thank you
PS. Both lines need to be surrounded with span for css-styling.
First off, don't rule out using a br tag. This is a semantically-appropriate place for a br tag (forcing a hard break inside a line or paragraph of text). Plus, if you use a br tag, it may no longer be necessary to put either of the two lines of text in separate tags, unless you want to style them differently.
<a href='#'>
Studies<br/>
-Information about studies
</a>
Second, try viewing the HTML with stylesheets disabled (I do this in Firefox by pressing ctrl-shift-S, with a little help from the Web Developer extension). Is the browser able to render the content in an easy-to-read way based solely on the HTML provided? To some extent, the more readable the "unstyled" content appears, the more semantically-correct the HTML is.
Given that the second line of text seems to be secondary to the first line (a subtitle, not as important, possibly redundant or not entirely essential), putting the first line in a strong tag or putting the second line in a small tag are a couple ways to establish the relative importance of the two lines, if you wish to do so.
<a href='#'>
<strong>Studies</strong><br/>
-Information about studies
</a>
<a href='#'>
Studies<br/>
<small>-Information about studies</small>
</a>
There's some room for personal preference here. These are just two approaches.
It may be a little bit of a stretch using a small tag in a case like this, but it's not entirely inappropriate. A small tag is typically used for "fine print", attribution, disclaimers, or side comments. It doesn't semantically mean the text is small, but it does tend to be used for content that's secondary to something else (that clarifies something else). It should though only be used for text that's short in length.
And a strong tag doesn't have to be styled bold. In fact, that's the whole point of semantic markup: It doesn't specify or imply how the content will be styled; all it does is offer a hint to the meaning or context of the content. A strong tag can reasonably be given a style of font-weight:normal.
In order to achieve that those are in separate lines, try using the <div> tag instead. You can still specify a class for styling, the only difference is that <div>s are block-elements; each of them is rendered on a separate line. Here's the modified version of your code:
<a href='#'>
Studies
<div class="alt">-Information about studies</div>
</a>
Another, slightly more preferable way of doing that is by styling the elements to be block-elements. That can be used by setting the CSS display property to block. Something like:
<a href='#'>
Studies
<span class = "alt block">-Information about studies</span>
</a>
(Note that class = "alt block" means the element has both classes alt and block, and note also that the first <span> is removed because there's no need to style that node with anything).
CSS:
.block {
display: block;
}
Hope that helped you!
Essentially, my question is, what is the difference between the two lines in the body of this HTML document?
<html>
<head>
<style>
.test {color:green; font-weight:normal}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<b class="test">Test with b tag</b><br />
<span class="test">Test with span tag</span><br />
</body>
</html>
The <b> (or even better <strong>) contains semantic information that the text should be highlighted (printed in bold). <span> doesn't have the same connotation to it. If you disable the CSS styles from the document you'll see the <b> text still in bold, but the <span> in normal text.
The distinction is important especially to screen readers that (often) can convey the information to the user. Using spans with classes carry no such information through.
This doesn't mean that you should always use <strong> or <em>: if the purpose is purely stylistic and you're not emphasizing text, it's better to use classes.
As per there functionally there is no such difference but there are some differences like this <b> use to generally bold the text without define font-weight:bold in css.It's easily print text in bold. But for <span> you have to define CSS.
Now the question which one is good. My answer is span because span was created for multiply styling but other tags like <b>, <strong>, <i>, <em> etc are created for represent attribute without using style. So, for an systematic mark if you only want to bold the text then <b> is good but if you want other properties like bold, italic,color etc. Then it's better to use .
As per W3C
The b element represents a span of text offset from its surrounding
content without conveying any extra emphasis or importance, and for
which the conventional typographic presentation is bold text; for
example, keywords in a document abstract, or product names in a
review.
<b> and <strong> have the semantic meaning "should be displayed in bold" while <span> is a general-purpose inline element.
But from a technical point of view there are no real differences between those elements if the proper CSS is applied.
They might look different, because they have default styles applied to them. Since your not removing all the styles before adding your styles, they will look different. And might also look different between browsers.
I found many different views on many articles on presentation tags, with some people thinking all tags are presentational, but some others do not think so.
For example: in the HTML 5 specification, they do not think <small> is presentational.
In this list of tags - which are all HTML 5 supported - which tag is presentational and which is not?
<abbr>
<address>
<area>
<b>
<bdo>
<blockquote>
<br>
<button>
<cite>
<dd>
<del>
<dfn>
<dl>
<dt>
<em>
<hr>
<i>
<ins>
<kbd>
<map>
<menu>
<pre>
<q>
<samp>
<small>
<span>
<strong>
<sub>
<sup>
<var>
Who decides which HTML tag is presentational and Which is not - and how do they make that decision? Is it a particularly large group such as the W3C or is it based on groups of web developers, i.e. the web community? Also, between the two, which advice we should follow for deciding which tags are presentational?
If a tag is valid as according to the W3C in accepted doctypes, then what are the pros to not using any xhtml tag from any point of view?
in user/usability/accessibility point of view
if we use more HTML tags then pages without CSS will better.
in developer point of view
if we make use of more available tags in HTML, than we do not need to use <span class=className">
it takes more time to write and it uses more charter space than tags in HTML and CSS both.
For example:
instead of using:
<span class="boldtext">Some text<span>
.boldtext {font-weight:700}
We can use:
<b>Some text<b>
b {font-weight:700}
it looks cleaner, it is easier to use , it uses less characters - which will reduce the page size - and it is more readable in source. It also does not break the rule of content and presentation separation.
We can also do this:
<b class="important">Some text<b>
b.important {font-weight:700}
and whenever we want to change font-weight then we can change css only in both examples.
If a tag is considered valid by w3c in their recognized doctypes, then what are the pros to not using any X/HTML presentational tags which are not directly recognized by either the W3C, or by the HTML specifications?
Can we change any design parameters without changing anything in HTML? Does this fit within the meme of content and presentation separation?
If any HTML tag breaks the rule of separation, then does not the css property Content break as well?
see this article.
Why are the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes for the IMG element permitted?. does it not break the rule of separation? A good debate on this matter can be found here.
W3C decides the semantics of tags. The specification documents of HTML5 gives conditions on the use of the various tags.
HTML5
To continue with your example, there is nothing wrong with using <b> to bold some text unless:
The text being bolded is a single entity already represented by a tag:
Incorrect:
<label for="name"><b>Name:</b></label>
Correct: (Use CSS to style the element)
label { font-weight: bold; }
<label for="name">Name:</label>
The text is being bolded to put added emphasis and weight on a section or words of a block of text.
Incorrect:
<p>HTML has been created to <b>semantically</b> represent documents.</p>
Correct: (Use <strong>)
<p>HTML has been created to <strong>semantically</strong> represent documents.</p>
The following is an example of proper use of the <b> tag:
Correct:
<p>You may <b>logout</b> at any time.</p>
I realize that there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference between the above example and the one using <strong> as the proper example. To simply explain it, the word semantically plays an important role in the sentence and its emphasis is being strengthened by bold font, while logout is simply bolded for presentation purposes.
The following would be an improper usage.
Incorrect:
<p><b>Warning:</b> Following the procedure described below may irreparably damage your equipment.</p>
Correct: (This is used to add strong emphasis, therefore use <strong>)
<p><strong>Warning:</strong> Following the procedure described below may irreparably damage your equipment.</p>
Using <span class="bold"> is markup-smell and simply shouldn't be allowed. The <span> element is used to apply style on inline elements when a generic presentation tag (ie.: <b> doesn't apply) For example to make some text green:
Incorrect:
<p>You will also be happy to know <span class="bold">ACME Corp</span> is a <span class="eco-green">certified green</span> company.</p>
Correct: (Explanation below)
<p>You will also be happy to know <b>ACME Corp</b> is a <em class="eco-green">certified green</em> company.</p>
The reason here why you would want to use <em> as opposed to <span> for the word green is because the color green here is used to add emphasis on the fact that ACME Corp is a certified green company.
The following would be a good example of the use of a <span> tag:
Correct:
<p>You may press <kbd>CTRL+G</hbd> at any time to change your pen color to <span class="pen-green">green</span>.</p>
In this example, the word green is styled in green simply to reflect the color, not to add any emphasis (<em>) or strong emphasis (<strong>).
The whole distinction between "presentation" elements versus "structure" element is, in my opinion, a matter of common sense, not something defined by W3C or anyone else. :-P
An element that describes what its content is (as opposed to how it should look) is a structure element. Everything else is, by definition, not structural, and therefore a presentation element.
Now, I'll answer the second part of your post. I understand this is a contentious topic, but I'll speak my mind anyway.
Well-made HTML should not concern itself with how it should look. That's the job of the stylesheet. The reason it should leave it to the stylesheet, is so you can deliver one stylesheet for desktop computers, another one for netbooks, smartphones, "dumbphones" (for lack of a better term), Kindles, and (if you care about accessibility, and you should) screen readers.
By using presentation markup in your HTML, you force a certain "look" across all these different types of media, removing the ability of the designer to choose a look that works best for such devices. This is micromanagement of the worst sort, and designers will hate you for it. :-)
To use your example, instead of using <b>, you should ask yourself what the boldness is supposed to express. If you're trying to express a section title, use one of the header tags (<h1> through <h6>). If you're trying to express strong emphasis, use <strong>. You get the idea. Express the what, not the how; leave the how to the stylesheet designers.
</soapbox>
It's not that presentational elements should be avoided, it's that markup should be as semantic as possible. When designing a document structure, default styling should be considered a secondary affect. If an element is used solely for presentation, it's not semantic, no matter what element is used.
The example usage of <b> isn't semantic, because <b> imparts no meaning. <span class="boldtext"> also isn't semantic. As such, their usage is mixing presentation into the structure.