Proper (meaning valid and semantic) Markup and CSS, Please.

timberford

cause h1 is site head, h2 is page head, so the next level of headings is h3. with any sub heads within an h3 at h4. as the categories in the side panel don't have a heading i think h3 is ok. if there was a title on the side panel, i'd put that at h3 and then the categories at h4. hope that makes sense lol. either way it is lower than the h2, yet before it in the markup which isn't best practice, although sometimes unavoidable. i just wanted to raise the point that was all.

Bergamot

I don't think it matters what order the headings appear in the markup code as long as they're properly ordered with respect to their position in the markup tree.

alexander

I will definately follow this. Great initiative! :)

nick1presta

The reason why I place <h#> tags inside a DT element is because, unstyled, the DT looks like any other text. However, if it does not pass validation (which it won't), then we can ditch it. I suppose the DD offset from the DT will show that it's a title just fine.

Elliott Hird

F**king hell, this is hypocritical. I suggested the same as thing <strong>but with the source code</strong>, and what do I get? Exactly.

c-unit

Elliot, show a little respect, I don't see you making any brillant forum software. All I've seen you do is criticize Vanilla since you started posting. Why are you so negative?

nick1presta

<strong></strong> are presentational tags. Since these are part of the layout itself and the design, presentational tags should not be used.

Bergamot

"strong" are presentational tags.

No, they're not.

Elliott Hird

^ yeah, B is a presentation tag BUT STRONG IS FINE, XHTML ADVOCATES! C-uniT: I've got asperges. Deal with it, or get mark to ban me.

Bergamot

Ahh nevermind.

Minisweeper

Elliot - you got a couple of perfectly reasonable and very tolerant responses considering the manner in which your 'idea' was posed. If you'd read through nicks first post a couple more times you may notice certain things about the way he said things. Most importantly, he immediately suggested that he'd be willing to go through the markup/whatnot in question and sort it all himself if his changes were to be considered in the release of the software. You, on the other hand, just said 'the vanilla code is crap', dumped a list of points, and carried on bitching throughout the rest of the forum.
Come to think of it, you got more than what nick got - mark went through the *entire* codebase shortly afterwards replacing all ' and " as you'd suggested wheras to nick he just said that if he was willing to do it mark would take it on board (although this is because, through his own admission, markup/css isnt marks strong point, i'd still say you got a pretty good deal).
Personally i dont care what you've got. I fail to believe it's impossible for you to show a little decency and respect and learn how to correctly interact with people to earn decency and respect in turn. Nick posed his ideas nicely and a lot of people have drummed up help. Take a leaf man...

timberford

good call. and back to topic... just taking a look at the actual post markup. currently the 'block user', 'block comment' etc are wrapped in divs positioned next to each other via css. how about giving these the ul li treatment?

nick1presta

http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmlintermediate/badtags/ I wasn't sure of the correct word - perhaps presentational wasn't correct. I simply meant that <strong></strong> and <em></em> and such should only be used as content, not as design. If you wanted a heading to be bold, you wouldn't use <strong> on it, you would use font-weight: bold because it's part of the design and we want people to style the headers after among other things. I hope I got my point across better...

Bergamot

I think I would even disagree with that. <strong> and <em> convey the importance of a particular piece of inline content; I think the thread title is certainly important enough to merit that.

nick1presta

So you want to use, <dt><strong>Topic Title</strong></dt>, ? What happens if I want to create a stylesheet and I don't want my headers bolded, yet changed a different color? I have to style the <strong> element when I could simply style the DT. Just like with headers, you don't do, <h1><strong>Site Title!</strong></h1> for the same reason.

Bergamot

Personally, I don't care if the strong tags get in there or not; I'd probably leave them out. True, they are slightly redundant (though not as much as your H1 example), but there's nothing "unsemantic" about putting them there.

timberford

as i understood it, strong and em give different emphasis to screen readers, they aren't just presentational to the screen. in the case of this forum i think we should avoid those tags. purely for flexibility.

nick1presta

If at all possible, I would like to begin this "markup cleanup" tonight. We can chat over AIM, MSN, IRC, etc to discuss what we think should be what and what to begin first.

Bergamot

I don't see why we can't just do what we're doing: someone posts a prototype and everyone else rips it apart.

Mark

That could take forever. I've seen xhtml debates go on for months. Eventually someone is going to have to step up to the plate and make something, style it, and release it. *THEN* everyone can argue about better ways of doing it.