Semantic Markup

[digitalclubb]

Hey Guys,

Obviously we all love writing clean semantic HTML when developing our sites, but I am curious - what does semantic HTML mean to you?

To me, it's the separation of style and content. i.e no in-line styles, no use of deprecated tags such as <bold>, <i> etc.

How far do you go with it - are line breaks classed as a no no? (I never use them, just curious)

It would be good to get the general consensus on whats allowed in semantic markup and what isn't.

If anyone has any documentation on the matter, that would be a great help.

Cheers.

[abduraooft]

what does semantic HTML mean to you? Here's a good read at http://boagworld.com/technology/semantic-code-what-why-how

[MattF]

I class semantic as being easily readable and understandable in a text browser, so unnecessary tags like <b><i> etc aren't used, (styling is what CSS is for, after all), yet tags like strong, em, code, br etc are all fine, IMHO. Those actually tell you what the page and text is supposed to look like, how it should flow and to give the portions of text meaning. In other words, the content and general layout should come across, in basic form, the same in either text form or fully styled.