Hi, In the past (and sometimes at present) Webpages were produced (I wouldn't say designed) with heading tags used purely for their visual presentation of text rather than actually being a header in the structure of the document. This is partly what the W3C is getting at.
The important thing here is that the headers be used to structure the document correctly. It often helps to imagine writing the document in an ordinary (linear)wordprocessor and considering where the various levels of header should go to structure it correctly. Place headers according to their importance in the meaning and structure of the document. You might have several h2 headings each followed by their own related h3, h4, etc. headings. I wouldn't say skipping a level really matters, it is their relative rather than absolute importance to the preceding higher heading that counts. With this in mind, in your example: <h2>Title</h2> > <p>some text</p> > <h4>Title</h4> <--- not related, or a sub-head of h1, simply a less > important heading > <p>more text</p> > If the h4 header is not related to, or a sub-head of, the preceding headers then it has no place in the structure of the document text preceding it. Therefore, to maintain a correct document structure, it should be a header equal to the highest previous header in the document or separated in some other way to make it clear that it is unrelated to previous content (if it should be on the same Webpage at all). At least that's how I see it. Stuart On Tue, March 20, 2007 7:16 pm, Lee Powell wrote: > Hi all, > > Last evening I was playing around with some conceptual work which > included a vast number of headers, and it got me thinking into how > best to use them, and indeed how the spec says to use them. The W3C > spec states, that the range of headers goes from h1 through to h6, > and that headers should be tagged relevant to their importance. > > If this is the case, should headers be nested? In that an h3 should > always come after an h2, and an h4 should always proceed an h3. Or > should we markup content relevant simply to how important we feel a > certain heading is? > > For example, would it be good practice to use the following: > > <h2>Title</h2> > <p>some text</p> > <h4>Sub-Title of Title</h4> > <p>more text</p> > > or should I have used a <h3> instead of an <h4> because it is the > logical next heading in order? > > Again, in a large amount of markup, should I always use headers in a > ascending order or simply place the relevant header element based on > it's importance (as stated in the W3C specs)? > > <h2>Title</h2> > <p>some text</p> > <h4>Title</h4> <--- not related, or a sub-head of h1, simply a less > important heading > <p>more text</p> > > In this example, should I have used another <h2>? is it wise to > simply jump to an <h4>? Incidentally, how do we weight the importance > of headings? If a page had several <h2> elements, no <h3> elements, > but a dozen <h4> elements, would this indicate that the <h4> elements > simply weren't important enough to be given <h3> tags? > > Sorry if I haven't explained myself very well, and this may seem a > bit over-the-top way of thinking about how heading should be marked > up, but some clarity in the matter would help my work. > > Regards > > Lee Powell > > > ******************************************************************* > List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm > Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ******************************************************************* > > -- Stuart Foulstone. http://www.bigeasyweb.co.uk BigEasy Web Design 69 Flockton Court Rockingham Street Sheffield S1 4EB Tel. 07751 413451 ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
