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Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

coding.smashingmagazine.com

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Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#21

Post by spacefungus »

AmazingBytecode wrote: post #7

The fact that our current systems for giving semantic classifications to web content are insufficient does not mean that giving web content semantic meaning is a pointless idea. It's like going back to the early 1980s and blogging about how computer graphics suck so you shouldn't be wasting your time looking into them.

I disagree and don't think that's the point of the article. The analogy you gave is a little hinky, too.

The main point here is that too much time is wasted on simple issues. While energy is heaved into whether or not is a better tag than , a lot of actual work and design could have been done.

Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#22

Post by dasil003 »

Hmm, I've been doing web development for over 15 years now, and I was one of the first to jump on the CSS bandwagon ca. 2000. Most of the hand-wringing semantic purity came from front-end people doing small sites or blog templates, and the high watermark was around '03. There was a long period of stagnation and XHTML dying on the vine while the world continued using IE6 interminably.

To me this article is a very good rebuttal to a lot of the arguments that people were throwing around at that time. However these days things are different...

The emergence of WHATWG and the unification of the HTML5 standard and a recommitment by the W3C towards on-the-ground pragmatism have really changed the standards world. HTML5 to me is a breath of fresh air. When I read about the new elements I see that they are directly addressing real world issues, and I see that browsers seem to be picking them up pretty quickly. I don't see a lot of bloat or pointless ceremony like XHTML 2.0, and there is always an eye towards backwards compatibility.

Given these developments, I'd say the effort to understand and utilize HTML5 appropriately is a good investment even if there are no material benefits for a particular tag at this point in time. I don't see it as the huge time sink the author makes out, but rather as something I spend a couple hours a month doing as part of my regular job. It's not about obsessing over things, but just having an ambient awareness of what tags are there and how to use them so that my work is of higher quality and reaps whatever future rewards come down the pipe without extra effort.

Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#24

Post by ricardobeat »

andybak wrote: post #2

God, yes. So much of what's repeated about the benefits of semantic markup are pie-in-the-sky. The link to the IRC logs in that piece was fascinating. To see Mark Pilgrim - who was always at the pragmatic end of things when it came to the accessibility debate - recanting many of the positions he takes in 'Dive into Accessibility' tells you how little of the things that we've been promised for years have actually amou…

God, no. Please don't help to spread this horseshit.

Here are the user agents that make use of it:

- ChromeVox: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kgejglhpjiefppelpm...

- NVDA: http://www.nvda-project.org/

- Window-Eyes: http://www.gwmicro.com/window-eyes/

- VoiceOver: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/

- JAWS: http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-pa...

- Orca: http://live.gnome.org/Orca/

And two dozen others. And here a few living human beings that benefit from it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwoe7OjIxpw, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pntGp00HHr8, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAw0SIkXm1o, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBzSXIEusoU, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zSTJwIULYU, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_TFHqIHBqM

285 million people are visually impaired in the world. Putting aside the SEO, meta-data and other discussions, I think this is a pretty meaningful argument in favor of doing it right.

Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#25

Post by ricardobeat »

spacefungus wrote: post #21
AmazingBytecode wrote: post #7

The fact that our current systems for giving semantic classifications to web content are insufficient does not mean that giving web content semantic meaning is a pointless idea. It's like going back to the early 1980s and blogging about how computer graphics suck so you shouldn't be wasting your time looking into them.

I disagree and don't think that's the point of the article. The analogy you gave is a little hinky, too. The main point here is that too much time is wasted on simple issues. While energy is heaved into whether or not is a better tag than , a lot of actual work and design could have been done.

I work in a front-end only dev shop, and while we might have a few hour-long discussions on markup scattered around the year, there aren't enough elements in the spec to keep us busy for a day. The article is just exaggerating the "issue".

Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#26

Post by fleitz »

Or you could just use haml and .notation

I haven't seen a div tag in years. Unless your market is other designers do what your customers will pay for rather than whatever is in vogue. I wonder what fashionable designers would think about a site like HN still using tables.

Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#27

Post by icebraining »

damoncali wrote: post #12

Slanted and biased. I mean, just look at the author's name :) Actually, I quite agree. The days of being able to make sense of web pages via markup are gone. It was a good goal once, but the effort has failed. Time to move on and find a better accessibility solution.

But they aren't, they're just starting!

For example, search on Google for "Hearty Vegetable Lasagna Recipe". The way Google is able to recognize the review score, preparation time and number of calories of the recipe was extracting from the semantically tagged markup.

Now search for "Inception". See how Google recognized the review score, the director and the cast? Again, all from semantically tagged markup.

It's not over - it's only now beginning. But HTML5's new "semantic elements" are not the answer. RDFa, Microformats, Microdata - that's the real future.

Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#28

Post by andybak »

ricardobeat wrote: post #24
andybak wrote: post #2

God, yes. So much of what's repeated about the benefits of semantic markup are pie-in-the-sky. The link to the IRC logs in that piece was fascinating. To see Mark Pilgrim - who was always at the pragmatic end of things when it came to the accessibility debate - recanting many of the positions he takes in 'Dive into Accessibility' tells you how little of the things that we've been promised for years have actually amou…

God, no. Please don't help to spread this horseshit. Here are the user agents that make use of it: - ChromeVox: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kgejglhpjiefppelpm... - NVDA: http://www.nvda-project.org/ - Window-Eyes: http://www.gwmicro.com/window-eyes/ - VoiceOver: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/ - JAWS: http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-pa... - Orca: http://live.gnome…

You (and I to a certain extent) need to be more specific. You've provided a list of screen readers. What I was really trying to say was "when someone argues that a particular markup or technique has benefits, then they need to demonstrate a real user with a real need who will benefit using shipping technology".

So we would need to pick a particular point of contention and then we can argue the toss.

Re: Our Pointless Pursuit Of Semantic Value

#29

Post by andybak »

andybak wrote: post #28
ricardobeat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God, no. Please don't help to spread this horseshit. Here are the user agents that make use of it: - ChromeVox: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kgejglhpjiefppelpm... - NVDA: http://www.nvda-project.org/ - Window-Eyes: http://www.gwmicro.com/window-eyes/ - VoiceOver: http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/ - JAWS: http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/jaws-product-pa... - Orca: http://live.gnome…

You (and I to a certain extent) need to be more specific. You've provided a list of screen readers. What I was really trying to say was "when someone argues that a particular markup or technique has benefits, then they need to demonstrate a real user with a real need who will benefit using shipping technology". So we would need to pick a particular point of contention and then we can argue the toss.

PS If you read the Mark Pilgrim IRC logs he caricatured the response he often found when criticising any aspect of accessibility best-practise as "OMG!!! YOU HATE BLIND PEOPLE!!!". It's an effective way of shutting down debate and doesn't help anyone.
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