Ian Hickson Compliments a Noob (25th March 2008)
Ian Hickson has continued working through table feedback. He and I discussed my research on #whatwg. What is the best markup for dialogue? Here are a few different ways:
<blockquote>with<p>for author and message.<blockquote>with<p>for message with<cite>for author.<div class>with<cite>for author,<blockquote><p>for message.<blockquote class><dl>with<dt>for author,<dd>for message.<blockquote class><dl class>with<dt>for author,<dt>for message.
My new favourite is <blockquote><table> with <th> for author and <td> for message:
Hixie: i don't believe i've ever looked at so many tables before :) Hixie: i ended up covering two whiteboards with little table diagrams BenMillard: I can well imagine! BenMillard: I think I looked at thousands overall because I wanted to see how consistent each site was Hixie: thanks for that, it made my life much easier :) BenMillard: I'm happy to be useful. not bad for a noob :P Hixie: :) BenMillard: what specifically did you find useful about it? was it just having links to lots of genuine data tables in one place? Hixie: that was a big part of it Hixie: but also your analyses were useful to clue me in to what was important and useful Hixie: also your stats were very useful as a way to quantify the qualitative experience of the many tables and the anecdotal impression of the distribution of the types of tables BenMillard: that's good to know. if/when I do more research, I'll concentrate the resulting document(s) on these useful aspects Hixie: awesome
<blockquote><dl compact> would be OK. Creating <dialog> seems a bit overkill.
Thoughts
Barely a year ago I had never studied markup. 2 years ago I was completely convinced that “Appendix C” style XHTML was the answer to everything. But now I’m being complimented for studying an issue around HTML5.
When people change their ideas for the better, I think it’s called growing.