Yesterday’s entry about definition lists was, I think, a good one for all web developers but especially so for the slightly less experienced ones. So I thought I’d point out some other tags that can be very valuable but that don’t typically get the exposure they might otherwise deserve. BTW, the “(X)” in the title is quite intentional since these all really apply to both :HTML: and :XHTML:.
All the phrase elements: <em>, <strong>, <dfn>, <code>, <samp>, <kbd>, <var>, <cite>
<address>: for mailing addresses, but also useful for signatures, copyright text, etc.
<del>: almost always more semantic and correct than <strike>
<fieldset>: great way to group <form> elements together and in many browsers it will be rendered as a box around the group. Can be used with the <legend> tag to make a label for the box
<ins>: for text you insert at a later date
<label>: for use with elements inside a <form>; this can add functionality in many browsers so that clicking on the label activates the field
<q>: for short, inline quotes. Gecko-based browsers will automatically add quotes around this text as they’re supposed to; IE won’t. You can always style them with CSS, though.
So there are a few of the more “forgotten” tags for you to mull over. Obviously, you won’t use all of those tags for any given site/situation, but it’s good to remember that there are sometimes tags out there that are exactly what you need, but about which you may have forgotten.
Posted Friday January 30, 2004
in (X)HTML and CSS by Chris Curtis
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Good point, Chris! I couldn’t agree more. Using semantic mark-up is quite essential.
In relation to your post, below is a good reference for definition list:
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/htmlintermediate/definitionlists/
By RavenStrider on January 31, 2004 at 01:55am link