Heading-related HTML issues

**Lachlan Hunt** · Jul 20 '05, 07:02 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Dave Patton wrote:[color=blue]
> http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/gps.html[/color]

<snip>Descripti on of page structure</snip>
[color=blue]
> Anyone care to offer any suggestions, either about the proper
> way to structure the page/headings, or anything else on my site?
> Thanks[/color]

This is easy. Write down, on a piece of paper, the structure you
want for you headings. Write it in a heirachy, so that you can see what
level each heading is at.

Start with the document title, this is heading 1. Then, list all the
section headings below that, indented one level. Then repeat for sub
headings.
For example:

CIS (<h1>)
Overview (<h2>)
Sub Heading 1 (<h3>)
Sub Heading 2 (<h3>)
Global Positioning System (<h2>)
At this Site (<h2>)

This may not be accurate, I didn't read the whole content, so I don't
understand the correct structure. Use it as a guide only.

You can either put the site navigation at the top or bottom. Either
way, be sure to include a skip link to either skip to content or skip to
navigation, depending whether it's at the top or bottom. You can hide
this skip link with CSS, but it's visible when the document is not styled.

After you've worked out you're structure, mark it up using the
correct heading elements. Wrap each heading and its associated content
within a <div>. The CSS Zen Garden does this, and I do it on my site.
So you should end up with some code like this.
<body id="cis">
<div id="container" >
<h1><acronym title="C? I? S?">CIS</acronym></h1>

<p>content...
<div>
<h2>Overview</h2>
<p>content... </p>
<div>
<h3>Sub Heading 1</h3>
<p>content... </p>
</div>
<div>
<h3>Sub Heading 2</h3>
<p>content... </p>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<h2>Global Positioning System</h2>
<p>content... </p>
</div>
<div>
<h2>At this Site</h2>
<ul>
<li>menu items...</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</body>

When you're done, validate you're page, with the outline option
selected. The outline should match the way you've structured your
headings. This link will validate you're current site, and show the
heading structure outline at the end.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fmembers.shaw.ca%2Fdavepatton%2Fgps.html&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=%28detect+automatically%29&outline=1&verbose=1

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http://www.lachy.id.au/

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**Barry Pearson** · Jul 20 '05, 07:02 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Lachlan Hunt wrote:[color=blue]
> Dave Patton wrote:[color=green]
>> http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/gps.html[/color]
>
> <snip>Descripti on of page structure</snip>
>[color=green]
>> Anyone care to offer any suggestions, either about the proper
>> way to structure the page/headings, or anything else on my site?
>> Thanks[/color][/color]
[snip][color=blue]
> After you've worked out you're structure, mark it up using the
> correct heading elements. Wrap each heading and its associated
> content within a <div>. The CSS Zen Garden does this, and I do it on
> my site.[/color]
[snip]

Interesting. I've never considered wrapping *all* headers+content this way.

However, I often do this for deeper nesting, and I then use the following
rule. It indents the header+content. It works progressively when nested, of
course. It can make it visually clearer what the structure is, without just
relying on different styles for the headers:

div.section {
margin-left: 3em;
}

--
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http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/

http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/

http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

**Harlan Messinger** · Jul 20 '05, 07:02 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

"Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@l achy.id.au.upda te.virus.scanne rs> wrote in
message news:onUxc.386$ sj4.38@news-server.bigpond. net.au...[color=blue]
> Dave Patton wrote:[color=green]
> > http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/gps.html[/color]
>
> <snip>Descripti on of page structure</snip>
>[color=green]
> > Anyone care to offer any suggestions, either about the proper
> > way to structure the page/headings, or anything else on my site?
> > Thanks[/color]
>
> This is easy. Write down, on a piece of paper, the structure you
> want for you headings. Write it in a heirachy, so that you can see what
> level each heading is at.[/color]
[snip]
[color=blue]
> After you've worked out you're structure, mark it up using the
> correct heading elements. Wrap each heading and its associated content
> within a <div>. The CSS Zen Garden does this, and I do it on my site.
> So you should end up with some code like this.
> <body id="cis">
> <div id="container" >
> <h1><acronym title="C? I? S?">CIS</acronym></h1>
> 
> <p>content...
> <div>
> <h2>Overview</h2>
> <p>content... </p>
> <div>
> <h3>Sub Heading 1</h3>
> <p>content... </p>
> </div>
> <div>
> <h3>Sub Heading 2</h3>
> <p>content... </p>
> </div>
> </div>
> <div>
> <h2>Global Positioning System</h2>
> <p>content... </p>
> </div>
> <div>
> <h2>At this Site</h2>
> <ul>
> <li>menu items...</li>
> </ul>
> </div>
> </div>
> </body>[/color]

This makes eminently good sense. It applies a real hierarchical structure to
the page, rather than one that is only implied by the alternation of heading
elements and paragraphs. It lends itself to easy and flexible styling, and
can facilitate the implementation of certain features one might occasionally
want to code in client-side script.

**Lachlan Hunt** · Jul 20 '05, 07:02 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Harlan Messinger wrote:[color=blue]
> This makes eminently good sense. It applies a real hierarchical structure to
> the page, rather than one that is only implied by the alternation of heading
> elements and paragraphs. It lends itself to easy and flexible styling, and
> can facilitate the implementation of certain features one might occasionally
> want to code in client-side script.[/color]

Yes, it is what <div> is for â€” to indicate structural divisions,
however XHTML 2.0's <section> element is slightly more semantic for the
purpose I demonstrated, leaving <div> for more generic grouping or
dividing of document elements and sections. I like to use <div
class="section" >, in places where I would normally use <section> if I
were writing XHTML 2.0, which helps to distinguish them from more
general uses of <div>. I just omitted that to keep the example simple.
Basically, the idea is to make the transition to XHTML 2.0 in the future
in the future easy, as soon as it becomes a standard and is supported in
Mozilla, Opera and Safari; most likely not IE [1].

Also, the structure helps to see what level heading should be used,
especially when authoring long documents (assuming the indentation has
been kept consistent).

[1] It's already a foregone conclusion that IE won't even be supporting
XHTML 1.0 when Windows Longhorn is released; at least according to Hixie
[1a], so I just don't care about IE any more (not that I ever cared much
anyway). My site won't be supporting it now, except for virtually
unstyled text/html, for backwards compatibility with other older UAs.
[1a] http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1086158925&order=-1&count=1

--
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Lachlan Hunt: Web Development Guru

http://www.lachy.id.au/

lachlan.hunt@la chy.id.au.updat e.virus.scanners

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**Harlan Messinger** · Jul 20 '05, 07:02 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

"Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@l achy.id.au.upda te.virus.scanne rs> wrote in
message news:F__xc.1208 $sj4.602@news-server.bigpond. net.au...[color=blue]
> Harlan Messinger wrote:[color=green]
> > This makes eminently good sense. It applies a real hierarchical[/color][/color]
structure to[color=blue][color=green]
> > the page, rather than one that is only implied by the alternation of[/color][/color]
heading[color=blue][color=green]
> > elements and paragraphs. It lends itself to easy and flexible styling,[/color][/color]
and[color=blue][color=green]
> > can facilitate the implementation of certain features one might[/color][/color]
occasionally[color=blue][color=green]
> > want to code in client-side script.[/color]
>
> Yes, it is what <div> is for â€” to indicate structural divisions,
> however XHTML 2.0's <section> element is slightly more semantic for the
> purpose I demonstrated, leaving <div> for more generic grouping or[/color]

It's not clear to me how "section" is more semantically related to the
*division* of a document into logical *sections* (or the sectioning into
logical divisions) than "div" is.

**Barry Pearson** · Jul 20 '05, 07:02 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Harlan Messinger wrote:[color=blue]
> "Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@l achy.id.au.upda te.virus.scanne rs> wrote[/color]
[snip][color=blue][color=green]
>> Yes, it is what <div> is for - to indicate structural divisions,
>> however XHTML 2.0's <section> element is slightly more semantic for
>> the purpose I demonstrated, leaving <div> for more generic grouping
>> or[/color]
>
> It's not clear to me how "section" is more semantically related to the
> *division* of a document into logical *sections* (or the sectioning
> into logical divisions) than "div" is.[/color]

What I found attractive about "section" was that it didn't require an explicit
statement of the header-level. It simply had a header.

If a section was nested inside a 2nd-level section, its header was equivalent
(in some sense) to a <h3>. Move that section to a position in a 1st-level
section and that header is immediately equivalent to a <h2>. That is a crude
way of thinking about it. But it illustrates that "section" is
context-dependent. And that is semantically important.

--
Barry Pearson

http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/

http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/

http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

**Harlan Messinger** · Jul 20 '05, 07:02 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

"Barry Pearson" <news@childsupp ortanalysis.co. uk> wrote in message
news:bk0yc.45$s j7.31@newsfe6-win...[color=blue]
> Harlan Messinger wrote:[color=green]
> > "Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@l achy.id.au.upda te.virus.scanne rs> wrote[/color]
> [snip][color=green][color=darkred]
> >> Yes, it is what <div> is for - to indicate structural divisions,
> >> however XHTML 2.0's <section> element is slightly more semantic for
> >> the purpose I demonstrated, leaving <div> for more generic grouping
> >> or[/color]
> >
> > It's not clear to me how "section" is more semantically related to the
> > *division* of a document into logical *sections* (or the sectioning
> > into logical divisions) than "div" is.[/color]
>
> What I found attractive about "section" was that it didn't require an[/color]
explicit[color=blue]
> statement of the header-level. It simply had a header.[/color]

Ah. I should have gone and looked into the details. Even cooler than I
thought.
[color=blue]
>
> If a section was nested inside a 2nd-level section, its header was[/color]
equivalent[color=blue]
> (in some sense) to a <h3>. Move that section to a position in a 1st-level
> section and that header is immediately equivalent to a <h2>. That is a[/color]
crude[color=blue]
> way of thinking about it. But it illustrates that "section" is
> context-dependent. And that is semantically important.[/color]

**Jukka K. Korpela** · Jul 20 '05, 07:03 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Dave Patton <none@none.co m> wrote:
[color=blue]
> http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/gps.html
>
> In another newsgroup(relat ed to GPS), in regards to
> the above page, someone said:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> That page has quite a cryptic title: "CIS: GPS". I saved the URL in my
> browser but changed the title to "Patton's GPS pages".[/color]

That's a quite understandable move; the user probably knows what "GPS"
is, and he wants to distinguish your page from all the other GPS pages he
has bookmarked.

But in a more general perspective, "Patton's GPS pages" isn't informative
enough. What's GPS? I'm pretty sure I could find 42 meanings for that
abbreviation, and I'm sure there are people who do not know any of them.
And Patton _who_? The general?

As the good old HTML 2.0 specification said, "The title should identify
the contents of the document in a global context. A short title, such as
"Introducti on" may be meaningless out of context. A title such as
"Introducti on to HTML Elements" is more appropriate." However, this is
not sufficient; there are, or could be, zillions of pages with the title
"Introducti on to HTML Elements".

I would suggest something like the following:
<title>Global Positioning System (GPS) material, collected by Dave
Patton</title>
[color=blue]
> The headings are rather haphazard. For example, the first one ("On
> This Page") is a third level heading (an <h3>), which looks strange
> because it doesn't fall under an <h2>.[/color]

Apparently, the table of content should have <h2>. And the <h1> should
describe the page as a whole; "Overview" says remarkably little, and does
not even vaguely describe the _page_. The <title> element's content might
be a good starting point.

By the way, if you use CSS positioning to set the ToC on the right, it
would probably be better to put it _last_ in HTML markup. That way it
would not disturb people using text browsers, speech browsers, and other
linearizing browsers too much. (They don't want to see or hear the menu
each and every time they move from one page to another on your site.)
[color=blue]
> The "CIS" refers to the initials of my company, and I agree I should
> change it - maybe to something like "Patton"?[/color]

Spelling out what it stands for (maybe followed by "(CIS)") would be OK.
This would associate the site with a company (maybe a small one) rather
than a private person.
[color=blue]
> The reason for the <h3>On This Page:</h3> being near the top of the
> page was that originally the navigation menu was at the bottom of the
> HTML, but when viewed without CSS support, it meant the navigation
> menu was at the bottom of the page, so I moved it to the top of the
> HTML, without making changes to the heading structure :-([/color]

If it were a 3rd level heading, it should have <h3> irrespectively of its
placement. But it's really 2nd level. And I think the move was wrong,
except perhaps on the _main_ page. When entering a main page, the user
_might_ wish to hear the table of content first; when entering a subpage,
oh no, people don't want to hear again and again what other pages there
are.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

**Tim** · Jul 20 '05, 07:03 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 15:41:09 +0000 (UTC),
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> posted:
[color=blue]
> By the way, if you use CSS positioning to set the ToC on the right, it
> would probably be better to put it _last_ in HTML markup. That way it
> would not disturb people using text browsers, speech browsers, and other
> linearizing browsers too much. (They don't want to see or hear the menu
> each and every time they move from one page to another on your site.)[/color]

This is something that I've been playing with recently. With it at the
top, you can float it to the right, and it positions fairly well in all
browsers, and doesn't end up with text drawing over the top of text (things
flow around each other). But if it's at the bottom and you try and
reposition it at the top, that doesn't work in various browsers (they
ignore the positioning), you have to use absolute positions and sizes
(which you can't do for text, because text is an unpredictable size), and
you have to deliberately make a blank space for it in some other way, so
that it doesn't get dumped over the top of the text on the page.

You're stuck choosing between two bad options, and I've found the first one
to be less of a problem for most browsers.

--
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**Jukka K. Korpela** · Jul 20 '05, 07:03 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Tim <tim@mail.local host.invalid> wrote:
[color=blue]
> With [the table of content] at
> the top, you can float it to the right, and it positions fairly well
> in all browsers,[/color]

Using positioning, you can put it anywhere in the markup and still have
it visually on the right, or on left, or elsewhere.
[color=blue]
> But if it's at the bottom and
> you try and reposition it at the top, that doesn't work in various
> browsers (they ignore the positioning),[/color]

So what? Usual CSS caveats apply anyway. If the navigation area is at the
bottom, no real harm is done, as opposite to "forcing" the user to listen
to a long list of links each and every time he moves from one page to
another (or to taking extra trouble and creating new problems by "skip
nav" links).
[color=blue]
> you have to use absolute
> positions and sizes[/color]

No I don't. See e.g. http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/styles/layout.html
(The positions are "absolute" only in the sense of being "absolute
positioning", which is positioning relative to a coordinate system.
You do _not_ need pixel units.)
[color=blue]
> You're stuck choosing between two bad options, and I've found the
> first one to be less of a problem for most browsers.[/color]

Why would you try and minimize harm caused to browsers, as opposite to
minimizing harm caused to users?

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

**Neal** · Jul 20 '05, 07:03 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 11:55:02 +0930, Tim <tim@mail.local host.invalid> wrote:
[color=blue]
> This is something that I've been playing with recently. With it at the
> top, you can float it to the right, and it positions fairly well in all
> browsers, and doesn't end up with text drawing over the top of text
> (things
> flow around each other). But if it's at the bottom and you try and
> reposition it at the top, that doesn't work in various browsers (they
> ignore the positioning), you have to use absolute positions and sizes
> (which you can't do for text, because text is an unpredictable size), and
> you have to deliberately make a blank space for it in some other way, so
> that it doesn't get dumped over the top of the text on the page.
>
> You're stuck choosing between two bad options, and I've found the first
> one
> to be less of a problem for most browsers.[/color]

Not claiming this as a perfect site, but check out how I accomplished it
here... http://www.opro.org/ Many other examples exist as well - you'll
find it's not that hard once you figure it out.

**Tim** · Jul 20 '05, 07:05 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Tim <tim@mail.local host.invalid> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> You're stuck choosing between two bad options, and I've found the first
>> one to be less of a problem for most browsers.[/color][/color]

Neal <neal413@yahoo. com> posted:
[color=blue]
> Not claiming this as a perfect site, but check out how I accomplished it
> here... http://www.opro.org/ Many other examples exist as well - you'll
> find it's not that hard once you figure it out.[/color]

That's something I have looked at, but still suffers the table layout
/magazine column look (multiple columns are a pest on a vertically
scrolling medium, and the reduce the space available for reading the actual
content).

The coding for something like that isn't too hard, but I'm looking for a
better implementation.

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**Tim** · Jul 20 '05, 07:05 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Tim <tim@mail.local host.invalid> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> With [the table of content] at the top, you can float it to the right,
>> and it positions fairly well in all browsers,[/color][/color]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> posted:
[color=blue]
> Using positioning, you can put it anywhere in the markup and still have
> it visually on the right, or on left, or elsewhere.[/color]

Though if you don't put it somewhere sensible, it does look bad.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> But if it's at the bottom and you try and reposition it at the top,
>> that doesn't work in various browsers (they ignore the positioning),[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> So what? Usual CSS caveats apply anyway. If the navigation area is at the
> bottom, no real harm is done, as opposite to "forcing" the user to listen
> to a long list of links each and every time he moves from one page to
> another (or to taking extra trouble and creating new problems by "skip
> nav" links).[/color]

I think that a long list of links, wherever it's placed is bad news. I was
sticking to something smaller (e.g. home, help, search).
[color=blue][color=green]
>> you have to use absolute positions and sizes[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> No I don't. See e.g. http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/styles/layout.html
> (The positions are "absolute" only in the sense of being "absolute
> positioning", which is positioning relative to a coordinate system.
> You do _not_ need pixel units.)[/color]

Which details most of the things I've tried.

If I simply float a menu to the right, the rest of the page can flow around
it, and I don't waste reading space below the menu.

If you carve the page into content and menu divs, you end up with a two
column display. As soon as the menu finishes, there's wasted blank space
below it for the rest of the page. Also, you have to specify widths, for
at least the menu - this isn't easy to do well (10ems for a 10 character
wide menu usually makes it far wider than needed, specifying less risks
there not being enough space on some people's displays).
[color=blue][color=green]
>> You're stuck choosing between two bad options, and I've found the
>> first one to be less of a problem for most browsers.[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> Why would you try and minimize harm caused to browsers, as opposite to
> minimizing harm caused to users?[/color]

Thus far, I've seen the alternatives to be more harmful to users (painful
to use).

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**Tim** · Jul 20 '05, 07:06 PM

Re: Heading-related HTML issues

Tim wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>> you have to use absolute positions and sizes[/color][/color]

"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fi> posted:
[color=blue]
> No I don't. See e.g. http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/styles/layout.html
> (The positions are "absolute" only in the sense of being "absolute
> positioning", which is positioning relative to a coordinate system.
> You do _not_ need pixel units.)[/color]

Though you've still used an absolute width for that side bar (ems rather
than px). How do you determine how many ems to use? Count the characters
in your text? What about the font sizing issues?

A few of my brief experiments: http://htmltestbed.speedymail.org/

Unfortunately I lost most of my positioning experiements (I wasn't doing
them on my computer, and didn't copy them to disk). :-( But trying them
out on different browsers did show me that it seemed to be the worst way to
do it (convoluted to do, and only worked on some browsers).

--
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Heading-related HTML issues

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