xset

Ditch the Divs

// February 7th, 2006 // Personal

Every time I see and post something like this I remind myself that I really should get XSet up and running again.

Until I get my head out of my ass and do you’ll get the occasional nerdy bit on here.

As a modern standards based designer (who occasionally does some designing) the art of semantically laying out ones mark-up is forever evolving.

P.J. Onori (aka SomeRandomDude.net) has provided what could well be the next evolutionary step in marking up pages so that they remain semantically sound. He uses Definition Lists (the <dl> tag and family subset) to mark-up a page thereby retaining the hierarchical flow between the page elements.

This means the page makes more sense when viewed without CSS and allows you to title your menu items without relying on extraneous mark-up. Of course there is still some duplication and it may not be ideal for every site but it certainly looks like a good starting place.

As I have a couple of designs to slice and make “webified” I think I’ll give this a try in the field and see how it holds up.

So next time you’re creating that page template why not try going DIVless?

(Hat-tip: Heather Solomon)