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Comment by boredpudding | Hacker News Reader

There is <header> already. What would be the difference between <h> and <header> ?

That's for a header, not a heading. A heading is a line of text providing a title for a section. A header is a part of the top of a page.

> A heading is a line of text providing a title for a section.

Which is exactly what <header> is trying to be.

> …introductory content for its nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element. A header typically contains a group of introductory or navigational aids.

> When the nearest ancestor sectioning content or sectioning root element is the body element, then it applies to the whole page.

Source: http://html5doctor.com/the-header-element/ (quoted from the actual spec)

your source clearly shows that it is not just for the heading (but can contain it, with <hX> tags), but contains other elements as well.

> > A heading is a line of text providing a title for a section.

> Which is exactly what <header> is trying to be.

Not at all:

> > A header typically contains a group of introductory or navigational aids.

Key word here is group. A header is a block containing other elements. A heading is a line of text. Often the header contains a heading, but header element itself is not a heading.

A realistic example might be something like:

  <header>
     <h1>New York Times</h1>
     <time>Monday, February 20, 2017</time>
  </header>

it's valid to put a <header> in any new section/main/article/aside

So it seems, my definition wasn't the best.

<h> is for heading elements (h1, h2, h3, etc.), <header> is for headers (more of a structural block container) I think.

header is metadata about the page and other related resources.

This is dealing with the semantic issue of, for example, web components not knowing enough about the context they are in to be able to declare the correct heading tag (h1, h2, h3... etc) as a static tag

> header is metadata about the page and other related resources.

I think you're confusing the head and header elements.

Nope.

It's already been solved by HTML spec.

Having an H tag it's the same of having the header tag. It doesn't solve any of the problems.

see http://imgur.com/a/FnLVb

The <h> proposal is different to the <header> proposal. <header> isn't involved in outline production. The <h> proposal is more like <h1> + sectioning.

Doing it like that means:

a) All headers are H1, and styled the same, unless you then start classing up the section and h1 tags accordingly = more complex css than need be.

b) not-so-clever page crawlers won't be able to extract the real H1 header that should title the page content.

I was just showing how the DEAFAULT browser's CSS take care of nesting and different importance of H1 tags depending on the context. H1 is already the H you're looking for.

The H tag would replace the H1 tags in all your SECTIONs. You're not using H2-6 in there at all, so what do we need the "1" on the end of H1 tags for? That seemed to be the crux of this article, we don't need numbered headings like that anymore because we have semantic block-level elements like SECTION, HEADER, etc. These elements can be used by the browser to deduce a structured outline from the page, and it's also easier to use said elements when you can think of them as portable components (without resorting to setting CSS classes on everything).

The truth is, H1-H6 were useful to screen readers when the web was a lot less complicated. With the component-driven philosophy of today's web development, it's harder to maintain that structure and stay within the confines of 6 possible headings, especially for single-page designs (the ones that scroll, not "single-page apps" made entirely with JS).

> The H tag would replace the H1 tags in all your SECTIONs. You're not using H2-6 in there at all, so what do we need the "1" on the end of H1 tags for?

the N after the H can be seen as the priority where 1 is the highest and 6 the lowest

> we don't need numbered headings like that anymore because we have semantic block-level elements like SECTION, HEADER

how do you express

HEADING > SUBHEADING > SUB SUBHEADING?

using classes? nesting tags?

> The truth is, H1-H6 were useful to screen readers when the web was a lot less complicated.

So in your opinion since the web is more complex now, we should drop perfectly reasonable tags?

> it's harder to maintain that structure and stay within the confines of 6 possible headings

I can't remember the last time this has been a problem.

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