Semantic or DIE!
What is Semantic HTML and why is it so $#&@! important to Web Developers?
Although I have my own opinions (describe the content, not the presentation), I love to hear hear what other developers think - especially those spouting with such zeal that you wouldn’t be surprised to see tattooed HTML tags covering their chest as they rip off their T-Shirt in outrage against non-standard mark up!
For instance take Jason Kottke’s answer…
As much as possible, the tags surrounding the content of a document should describe what that content is and/or what it’s for - mofo!
This is from a thorough (and passionate!) presentation from New Zealand that I found especially insightful.
I am posting it here for our reference…
http://www.ermanz.govt.nz/news-events/archives/presentations/semantichtml.html
Points of interest…
1. “Which tag should we use when?” It depends.
2. Semantics are determined by the user, and the user is not always human.
3. There isn’t a perfect HTML tag for everything and heck - sometimes the tag you think would be right might not be the best tag for a given situation.
Key take away…
Think about what the content is and why you want it to look a certain way.
Personally, I think companion ads should be an add-on to a media buy, not part of the core purchase - and definitely not required by agencies. I also think that in order to make sure ads are viewed it needs to be easy to get to the content with even less obtrusive ad inventory than before. Otherwise users WILL find a way to get right around it.
And above all - video ad specs should be open source compatible regardless of the player, i.e. be integrated with leading Open Source ad server OpenX to start. There are plenty of developers world wide that would do the integration and documentation work, we just need video player companies to warm up to the idea even if it means they need to alter their business model away from sharing ad revenues.
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