I did come across this quote from Google Webmaster Central:
“Our general strategy is to wait to see how content is marked up on the web in practice and to adapt to that. If we find that more and more content uses HTML5 markup, that this markup can give us additional information, and that it doesn’t cause problems if webmasters incorrectly use it (which is always a problem in the beginning), then over time we’ll attempt to work that into our algorithms….”
To me it’s sort of hazy as to what people expect the fabled Semantic Web to actually do. It’s hard to get a handle on what people like Berners-Lee actually expect the results to be in 10 years or so. Like you said, if I use quotation marks, I am able to find exactly what I want on Google 99% of the time, or it probably isn’t even on the web. I’d like the believers of the Semantic Web to actually give some concrete ideas that are unique, that have some “wow” factor. So far, while I am far from poo-poing the idea, I just shrug right now.
Does the “role” attribute bring semantic meaning to the computer itself?
Not that I know of. The browser’s accessibility layer passes it on to accessibility technology. But it wouldn’t be passed on to a calendar application on that computer. The new semantics might, in the future, but so far as I know roles are pretty much created for Accessibility Technologies.
Any way you look at it, NAV is just idiotic bloat in it’s current form – being used and abused for content that either already has perfectly good meanings on it,
Much like 99% of the new tags from HTML 5, it’s all a bunch of BS being used to sell books and videos on the new hype, while not providing ANY tangible advantages over the existing recommendation specs.
I really feel sorry for anyone duped into believing otherwise.
I really feel sorry for anyone duped into believing otherwise.
I’m waiting for my flying car, and user agents who understand these new semantics and then also other applications on my computer so information can be passed between them.
Who knows, it could happen. Something more than, if you stuff a gazillion spans with classes all over the place, Google will index and display your site with Rich Snippets info.
Yeah, right now it does seem pointless other than the additional semantics, which don’t seem to have much use right now anyway, other than screen reader agents adopting them, which I hear they are busy doing. Apparently, HTML5 give us the option of having several document outlines in one page? But again, I am not sure I understand the benefit of that yet either. Also, implementation of that is inconsistent and sometimes requires creating H elements, just to hide them with CSS, so that the document outlines will make sense. So that’s pretty clumsy and confusing right now too.
I thought there is but one document outline (per document). However for syndication reasons, your articles and maybe also sections? can be thought of as separate, smaller documents themselves. That is, they can have a document-like structure (<header>, <hgroup>, <footer>, <aside> and a body of content in the middle, though you would not add the “main” role to that body since articles are indeed not really separate documents).
Basically I’ll wait until either the new semantics actually mean something to UAs, or at least don’t require Javascript (IE6-9) to be read and/or don’t interfere with the current generation of AT. Those last two are pretty much keeping me away from using many HTML5 elements, and eventually those two reasons will go away. I mean, being able to call any header “header” means leaner CSS and Javascript targetting, for example.
I also find it rather retarded how they (WGs) decide some stuff: they add this “hidden” attribute that does nothing special (and will absolutely be abused by people who don’t have any clue what it’s for, esp since it doesn’t really have any use cases), yet want to remove half-broken stuff from HTML4 without at least trying to replace them with something similar that does work (longdesc, table summary). The arguments against those last two could give a kung-fu kick to “hidden” attribute and send it flying into deep space, never to be heard from again.
I saw an idea recently that I thought was interesting, which was meant to address the emergence of responsive design, a <picture> element. It goes like this, similar to the <audio> element:
<picture alt=“angry pirate”>
<source src=hires.png media=“min-width:800px”>
<source src=midres.png media=“min-width:480px”>
<source src=lores.png>
<!-- fallback for browsers without support –>
<img src=midres.png alt=“angry pirate”>
</picture>