div v h2

September 28, 2001 4:03 PM

Is there a reason you use <div class="monthday">September 28</div> instead of, e.g., <h2 class="monthday">September 28</h2>? I don’t know about everyone else, but I’d greatly appreciate a switch to the latter.
posted by gleemax to MetaFilter-Related at 4:03 PM (18 comments total)

I definitely fucked something up. Sorry.
posted by gleemax at 4:03 PM on September 28, 2001

hmmm, I think I prefer the first one. Or maybe...yeah! The second one!

no...

wait, can I change my mind?!
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:08 PM on September 28, 2001

I meant to post the source, but I must not have escaped the characters correctly. The difference is that the first one is a div and the second is a level 2 heading, i.e., h2. I’m wondering because, in user mode, a div has no intrinsic meaning to Opera, but an h2 does (and will look better in browsers without CSS support or with it disabled).
posted by gleemax at 4:17 PM on September 28, 2001

I just cleaned up the code for this post.

yeah, you're right gleemax, I'd like to toss all the divs, and go back to a low-tech H1, H2, P tag use with CSS. It'd make it easy to produce low-bandwidth version and be more descriptive.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:27 PM on September 28, 2001

Dammit, Matt!

Now MY comment is the one that looks stupid.

Oh. I guess that'll make it fit right in with the rest of my comments.

Never mind.
posted by Kafkaesque at 4:39 PM on September 28, 2001

Odd. It looks exactly the same in Opera.

I see you surrounded the div and h2 with xmp, but I’ve no idea what that is. (What I meant to do was escape the less than and greater than signs, so the code itself would show.)
posted by gleemax at 4:46 PM on September 28, 2001

According to the HTML Encyclopedia:

This is an obsolete HTML element. The syntax ... is used to enclose to text to be presented literally using a constant width (monopitch) type face such as Courier. It also causes a paragraph break.

It has the useful property uncommemorated by the HTML 3.2 standard of causing all mark up interpretation to be turned off, at least as far as both Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape 3.0 are concerned.
posted by kindall at 4:53 PM on September 28, 2001

I guess it’s finally time to upgrade to IE 3.
posted by gleemax at 5:32 PM on September 28, 2001

I wonder why they got rid of it. At any rate, it’s definitely not part of HTML 4 Transitional, which is what you’re using.
posted by gleemax at 5:39 PM on September 28, 2001

I think SAMP is in the standard now instead of XMP.

The trouble with P/H1/H2-style markup is, you guessed it, Netscape 4. DIVs aren't as meaningful, but they also don't come with hardwired spacing above and below. If you've ever had to produce a special Netscape stylesheet with negative top and bottom margins to make it look the same as every other browser, you'll know why people use DIV.
posted by rodii at 5:55 PM on September 28, 2001

The trouble with P/H1/H2-style markup is, you guessed it, Netscape 4.

Yeah, this is why I went div crazy. I did the HTML on the site back in March of 1999. CSS support was so varied between the browsers that this special div crazy layout was the only one that seemed to work.

Now that NN 4.x is less of a problem, I might go back to basic tags and ditch the tables altogether.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:24 PM on September 28, 2001

::nods gloomily:: nn 4.x made us do a lot of things that we regret now.

i can name more than a few people who i haven't seen ever since they switched over to the "simplicity" of flash.
posted by lotsofno at 6:45 PM on September 28, 2001

think SAMP is in the standard now instead of XMP.

Or use PRE, no, like Suck of old? Depends, I suppose, on whether you're a "structuralist" (SAMP) or a "layoutist" (PRE)...

(I'm just writing a piece for alleged newbies telling them to abandon their 4.x browsers, so consider that an endorsement.)
posted by holgate at 8:43 PM on September 28, 2001

We should burn Netscape 4.x users. Immediately.
posted by kchristidis at 6:29 AM on September 29, 2001

I dunno, a lot of people still use NN 4. Every time I try to move beyond it, I get email. There is a sizable core of people still stubornly in the "I won't use the Evil Empire browser and Mozilla sucks" camp.
posted by rodii at 10:25 AM on September 29, 2001

ugh. don'tcha know it. working in a community college, it's even worse - not because of the students, but my co-workers. "browser? what's that? isn't it just Netscape?" aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

okay, I feel better now. thanks.
posted by epersonae at 1:36 PM on September 29, 2001

Approximately 6% of visitors to my site use Netscape 4. Of course, that could be because it looks ugly in Netscape 4 and all my Netscape 4-using visitors never come back.
posted by kindall at 11:06 PM on September 29, 2001

I wish we knew more about who uses which browser when and where. I have users tell me (a) they are only allowed to use NN4 at work, because that's all the IT people will allow; (b) they use only NN4 at home, because their phone lines are too slow for the Big Download of a new browser; (c) outside the US, NN4 is still the most popular browser for reasons related to those above; (d) they use NN4 because they're on a *nix platform and it's simply a long-time tradition (Konqueror and Opera notwithstanding). It would be good to have more detailed statistics so we could tell whether such things are true.
posted by rodii at 10:06 AM on September 30, 2001