Hi,
I’m really sorry it’s taken me so long to write back to you (over a month!)—I’m really crap at email.
I’m writing to you hoping you can help me make my colleagues take html5 “seriously”. They have read your book, they know it’s the “right” thing to do, but still they write !doctype HTML and then div, div, div, div, div…
Now, if you could provide me with some answers to their “why bother?- questions” would be really appreciated.
I have to be honest, I don’t think it’s worth spending lots of time agonising over what’s the right element to use for marking up a particular piece of content.
That said, I also think it’s lazy to just use divs and spans for everything, if a more appropriate element is available.
Paragraphs, lists, figures …these are all pretty straightforward and require almost no thought.
Deciding whether something is a section or an article, though …that’s another story. It’s not so clear. And I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. Frankly, a div might be just fine in most cases.
For example, can one assume that in the future we will be pulling content directly from websites and therefore it would be smart to tell this technology which content is the article, what are the navigation and so on?
There are some third-party tools (like Readability) that pay attention to the semantics of the elements you use, but the most important use-case is assistive technology. For tools such as screen readers, there’s a massive benefit to marking up headings, lists, and other straightforward elements, as well as some of the newer additions like nav and main.
But for many situations, a div is just fine. If you’re just grouping some stuff together that doesn’t have a thematic relation (for instance, you might be grouping them together to apply a particular style), then div works perfectly well. And if you’re marking up a piece of inline text and you’re not emphasising it, or otherwise differentiating it semantically, then a span is the right element to use.
So for most situations, I don’t think it’s worth overthinking the choice of HTML elements. A moment or two should be enough to decide which element is right. Any longer than that, and you might as well just use a div or span, and move on to other decisions.
But there’s one area where I think it’s worth spending a bit longer to decide on the right element, and that’s with forms.
When you’re marking up forms, it’s really worth making sure that you’re using the right element. Never use a span or a div if you’re just going to add style and behaviour to make it look and act like a button: use an actual button instead (not only is it the correct element to use, it’s going to save you a lot of work).
Likewise, if a piece of text is labelling a form control, don’t just use a span; use the label element. Again, this is not only the most meaningful element, but it will provide plenty of practical benefit, not only to screen readers, but to all browsers.
So when it comes to forms, it’s worth sweating the details of the markup. I think it’s also worth making sure that the major chunks of your pages are correctly marked up: navigation, headings. But beyond that, don’t spend too much brain energy deciding questions like “Is this a definition list? Or a regular list?” or perhaps “Is this an aside? Or is it a footer?” Choose something that works well enough (even if that’s a div) and move on.
But if your entire document is nothing but divs and spans then you’re probably going to end up making more work for yourself when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript that you apply.
There’s a bit of a contradiction to what I’m saying here.
On the one hand, I’m saying you should usually choose the most appropriate element available because it will save you work. In other words, it’s the lazy option. Be lazy!
On the other hand, I’m saying that it’s worth taking a little time to choose the most appropriate element instead of always using a div or a span. Don’t be lazy!
I guess what I’m saying is: find a good balance. Don’t agonise over choosing appropriate HTML elements, but don’t just use divs and spans either.
Hope that helps.
Hmmm… you know, I think I might publish this response on my blog.
Cheers,
Jeremy