Anne van Kesteren

ALA does semantic nonsense

Although I quickly HREFed the article of A List Apart I think I have a few things more to say about Cross-Column Pull-Outs. It is not that I do not agree with the markup that was chosen as the editor's note mentions at the top. Using semantic meaningless elements for presentational use is fine by me. (Although I think the CSS WG should come up with better methods eventually.) It is the fact that they are using a semantically rich element, to be used for indicating changes between different document versions, for a semantically meaningless purpose.

After all, the DEL element could be very well implemented in a user agent (and in fact, this is recommended in XHTML 2.0, though we don't really care about that specification and XHTML 2.0 is using an attribute instead of an element) as del{display:none}. Since, according to CSS 3 the none value of the display property applies to all media it will not be read, seen, spoken or anything else you can come up with. And this is just a simple code example to show why it is wrong. If you look at it from a semantic point of view I simply can not understand why the reviewer thought it was ok. It is even less understandable if you notice which magazine published the article.

O well, A List Apart can be probably be happy with the fact that they are not alone.

Comments

  1. Doesn't everyone know ALA doesn't care about sementics? They don't provide truely good solutions, they provide webdesign tricks.

    Ignorance is bliss: click unsubcribe in Bloglines ;-)

    Posted by Robbert Broersma at

  2. Yet another ALA stuffup. Nothing new.

    ALA focuses on getting things to work while keeping your markup and your CSS validating. They don't really do a good job of promoting perfect (or at least close-to-perfect) standards compliance.

    Posted by Charl van Niekerk at

  3. It's still a (small) step forward from table based layouts. The strange thing is that I was doing it that way when I just became aware of standards and CSS (not so very long ago, about a year I would guess). Then how can I feel like I've "grown beyond" them? :s

    I should add that it was only because of Anne that I really became aware of what semantics are. End of off topic stuff. :)

    Posted by Frenzie at

  4. i think ala is doing good - in fact the main objective of this magazine is to make xhtml+css web solutions more wide-spread (or proove me wrong :-/). if they start going into more depth and talk about semantics, which most of the people who now still use old-school techniques consider to be a non-sense, they will loose some of their audience and the main point will be lost.

    because you can't talk about semantics when you haven't talked about xhtml and css and content-separated presentation. :)

    at least, ala's techniques arr not for bloggers and those kind of people who maintain a 10-page web site + blog. the articles are focused just on more practically usefull accomplishments :)

    Posted by nick at

  5. Nick, how does their focus justify a mistake? I'm not saying they should write anything about semantics, I couldn't care less. I'm saying that when they advocate a certain technique, they should have it thoroughly reviewed before they publish it.

    Posted by Anne at

  6. i'm sorry, i wasn't reading carefully enough... :)

    now i went through the ala article again and i think i can tell this is another technique i consider to be hard and dare i say useless to accomplish with the current level of functionality that css gives us and browser support. looking at it again, i think that with the del tag they are going way too far - i don't see the point (don't get me wrong - i'm just not that familiar with xml, but still i think i am able to do proper xhtml, even semantically correct at some point :) ).

    but another thing i do think is that with this article ala moves a bit away from the main focus - which i think is convincing web authors that they should try use standards-compliant code. and the technique in their current article just pushes beyond the functionality css 2.1 is meant to provide.

    but as Charl van Niekerk said: it's another ala stuffup :). maybe someone would want to use this technique.

    Posted by nick at

  7. The problem is: there is no technique (yet) that's semantically more correct.

    ALA focuses on getting things to work while keeping your markup and your CSS validating. They don't really do a good job of promoting perfect (or at least close-to-perfect) standards compliance.

    Correct, but after all, what should they do? Stop writing articles?

    Though it's not 100% semantically correct, this method involves web standards, and is way better than messing around with tables, old-skool HTML etc. If, say, 50 people, who really wanted to use Cross-Column Pull-Outs(tm) on their site, now start using this technique, this is definitely better than being a web cowboy.

    Posted by Mathias Bynens at

  8. I would like to object to this statement:

    This design option has not been available for web designers ... until now.

    M.

    Posted by Moose at

  9. Mathias Bynens, I'm not saying they should stop either. They should make sure their markup makes sense in way and they certainly shouldn't be promoting misusing semantic elements.

    I think they should also improve their use of terminology. They don't really use some terms very well.

    Posted by Anne at

  10. That's a good point. ALA should be the good example, 'cause lots of web designers read their articles every day; their influence is huge.

    However, in this very case... I don't think they're really promoting the misuse of semantic elements. Like I said:

    If, say, 50 people, who really wanted to use Cross-Column Pull-Outs(tm) on their site, now start using this technique, this is definitely better than being a web cowboy.

    It's better to misuse semantic elements than not use them at all!

    (P.S.: You can call me Mathias. Really. :) I don't call you Anne van Kesteren, right?)

    Posted by Mathias Bynens at

  11. Abusing something when you know how it should be used is worse than plain ignorance imho.

    Posted by Frenzie at

  12. The problem is: there is no technique (yet) that's semantically more correct.

    This may be true, but there are ways to make the content less semantically incorrect. del carries non-presentational semantics and could very well be displayed in wildly differing ways in less common agents. Your average Joe may not care about interoperability, but someone writing an article for a (supposedly) reputable information source should not be promoting bad practice.

    Many elements could be used instead of del. b, i, u, s and tt are all defined to be purely presentational elements otherwise carrying no meaning. It's not particularly good structure, but at least it's not bad structure.

    Posted by J. King at