It is similar as with buttons (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45774182).
Not sure when it was (10-15 years ago), but at some point everything became <div>s. So, instead of semantic markup, HTML became a UI toolbox.
Not sure when it was (10-15 years ago), but at some point everything became <div>s. So, instead of semantic markup, HTML became a UI toolbox.
I think semantic HTML is a great idea but it's kind of jaded to expect it at this point.
It also doesn't help that semantic elements have styling. That right there gives people good reason to use a neutral container as a baseline. In fact I would go as far as to say that having both div and span is a bad design decision. They are just aliases for css `display` values.
Just look at how they salivate for WASM where everything is closed up and inaccessible, including a11y.
I dunno; ISTR that the materializecss library used `<a>` for buttons.
It’d be interesting to have a parallel DocBook web for technical content, where consumers of that content could apply their own styles to render it in a way that’s best for them.
(I’m not saying I like the world we live in, but I don’t see a likely alternative.)
These days it's a moot point anyway, because everyone is using things like tailwind which provide a full reset for things like default buttons, so there really is no excuse.