I just saw something interesting I thought I’d pass along. In the new HTML 5 proposal, the strong element is being modified to represent “importance rather than strong emphasis.”
The WHATWG gives the following example:
<strong>Warning.</strong> This dungeon is dangerous.
<strong>Avoid the ducks.</strong> Take any gold you find.
<strong><strong>Do not take any of the diamonds</strong>,
they are explosive and <strong>will destroy anything within
ten meters.</strong></strong> You have been warned.Code language: HTML, XML (xml)The b element is supposed to represent “a span of text to be stylistically offset from the normal prose without conveying any extra importance, such as key words in a document abstract, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical typographic presentation is boldened.”
The WHATWG gives the following example:
The <b>frobonitor</b> and <b>barbinator</b> components are fried.Code language: HTML, XML (xml)To me, this is both exciting and confusing. Knowing we can nest the strong element opens up some new styling possibilities while keeping the markup valid and semantic. But using both the b and the strong elements, with different conditions for their usage, will ultimately be confusing for most people, including me.
Wonder how WYSIWYG editors will handle this.