

Semantic Snakeoil - kennethlove
http://brack3t.com/blog/2011/semantic_snakeoil/

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matttthompson
"It’s currently impossible to be 100% semantic and still be useful."

I disagree.

As I understand it, in this argument, "usefulness" is defined as "is styled
correctly with CSS". To this end, the author cites using `"class"="span6"` on
elements, which are presentational, but not semantic.

This argument may have held more clout a few years ago, but tools like Sass
have pretty much solved this problem of separation of content and
presentation. Using a framework like Compass allows `"span6"`, for instance,
to be expressed as a function on a semantic element, leaving your markup
intact.

CSS frameworks, like Twitter Bootstrap, still stuffer from this conflation,
but that's just a limitation of the tools. I make no claims to a prescriptive
argument on the matter--go ahead and do whatever works--but I would be
interested what the author would think about Sass, or Less.

~~~
kennethlove
As the author, I think we're pretty much on the same page. My example of
``span6`` is from the Twitter Bootstrap (which is also available as Less).

I don't think tools like Less and Sass can save us from this decision, though.
You can write hundreds of rules to handle different configurations of HTML
elements and remain completely semantic, but eventually you'll have the same
configuration in two places where you want them to appear different. Then you
have the decision of giving one of them an ID or giving them classes and those
have to be semantic (and custom to your site, requiring learning from future
devs) or generic and breaking the "semantic all the things!!!" rule.

People are trying to figure this out. Semantic.gs is a great example of that.
I just don't see, in our current browser, markup, and styles situation, a way
to avoid generic classes that's still new-developer-friendly.

~~~
matttthompson
You know, as nerdy as it is, it's this sort of Aristotelian dichotomy between
content and presentation that I really nerd out on. I'm reminded of an old
SimpleBits staple where Dan Cederholm challenged us to find the most correct
way to mark up breadcrumbs. But I digress...

I'm always glad to hear about more creative solutions to solving this dilemma.
In my experience, since switching to Sass, I can't really think of a case
where I had to sacrifice semantics for style, but perhaps that's an effect of
being a designer who's wary of such things (letting the man who shovels sh*t
decide how many elephants there should be in a parade, et wot).

Anyway, I don't think I share any normative urgency, (especially with
something like W3C specifications). At the end of the day, I'm overjoyed that
Sass saves me from 99% of semantics issues. For that other 1%, there's always
the style attribute, no? ;)

