On The (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#31

Post by chrismorgan » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

>

This is incorrect:

1. has no corresponding (viz. implicit) role, but can be given the role group, list, none or presentation https://w3c.github.io/html-aria/#el-dl>.

2. You’re only allowed to define aria-label on elements that have a compatible role, implicit or explicit https://w3c.github.io/html-aria/#docconformance-naming>.

3. aria-label is allowed on all but a handful of roles https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.2/#aria-label>, which in this case knocks out presentation and none, leaving group and list.

4. group doesn’t feel right, list feels acceptable.

In summary: either ditch the aria-label, or add role="list" (meaning also role="listitem" on children).

—⁂—

One thing the article misses is that you can have multiple in a row too, not just . The spec has a good example: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/grouping-content.html...

They’re not name–value pairs, they’re name–value groups.

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#32

Post by shermantanktop » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

The tag seems to cover a subset of a broad semantic space, but doesn’t easily extend beyond adding another .

I dunno, I guess I’m a caveman. If it looks right and works (including accessibility) then I figure I’m pursuing something that doesn’t matter a lot.

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#33

Post by egeozcan » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:06 PM UTC

Demiurge wrote: post #19

I love DL. I think tables, at least in the past, were misused as DLs even more in the past and the inconvenience of the table markup is even worse than a bunch of divs.

I always thought the DL as a single row of a table.

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#34

Post by moron4hire » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

perilunar wrote: post #22

cloud-oak wrote: post #14

The final example of the DnD statt sheet makes me think whether it's legal to nest s? I.e. can we do Actions ...

Yes. Any flow content is permitted inside a . See: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/#the-dd-element https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

I do it to render nested JSON objects, for example.

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#35

Post by froh » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

zufallsheld wrote: post #30

debesyla wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't markdown table just a bunch of | ?

That's the problem.

most specifically the problem is that markdown tables don't allow breaking the table row in multiple lines

but then you can always use HTML tables in markdown and Pandoc transforms it just fine

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#36

Post by moron4hire » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:14 PM UTC

phyzix5761 wrote: post #6

I'm curious if the spec actually says you can only wrap it with a div because I like to do semantic html and name my elements specific to my domain.

Custom-named elements are divs.

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#37

Post by xp84 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

captn3m0 wrote: post #10

> Prior to HTML5, this was called a definition list. This is because the was originally only intended to represent glossaries of terms and their definitions. TIL I’ve been naming it wrong for a decade.

I don’t want to check what year html5 was standardized because I think it may be north of a decade ;)

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#38

Post by myfonj » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:26 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #24

Demiurge wrote: post #19

I love DL. I think tables, at least in the past, were misused as DLs even more in the past and the inconvenience of the table markup is even worse than a bunch of divs.

It's not that inconvenient if you omit unnecessary closing tags: first second what ever I find it simpler and cleaner than any of the markdown table markups

Fair point, though /DT and /DD are also optional just like /TH, /TD and /TR are. So in effect, def…scription list could structurally save you one TR for each entry and two "BLE"s:

    Term 1Definition 1
           Term 2Definition 2
    
    Term 1Definition 1
        Term 2Definition 2

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#39

Post by jazzypants » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

froh wrote: post #35

zufallsheld wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem.

most specifically the problem is that markdown tables don't allow breaking the table row in multiple lines but then you can always use HTML tables in markdown and Pandoc transforms it just fine

Every markdown implementation is supposed to allow inline HTML.

Re: On The <dl> (2021)

#40

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 23, 2026, 3:30 PM UTC

tln wrote: post #23

> Admittedly, however, support for the element is not yet universal. Wait what? has been in HTML since.. the first draft in 1993! I like DL's but they can be challenging to style. This article is using a lot of fixed pixel widths which would break on really small screens or larger data.

[deleted]