status o' the day

[Bill Feidt]

In "HTML, The definitive guide" (O'Reilly, 1996), Musciano & Kennedy
claim, "A heading may contain any element allowed in text, including
conventional text, link anchors (<a>), images (<img>), line breaks
(<br>), font embellishments (<b>, <i>, <tt>, <u>, <strike>, and <font>),
and content-based style changes (<cite>, <code>, <em>, <kbd>, <samp>,
<strong>, and <var>)".

"In practice, however, font or style changes may not take effect within
a heading, since the heading itself prescribes a font change within
the browser". [4.2.4, p.64]

I routinely use <br> within <h> elements and they seem to work
uniformly across the major browsers at least.  Guess I'd have to second
Tom's assertion that correct HTML is becoming increasingly difficult
to write.  Thought provoking stuff.  This is a great forum.

Bill Feidt
wfeidt at nal.usda.gov
National Agricultural Library



At 06:46 AM 2/9/97 -0800, Karen G. Schneider wrote:
>First of all, I think what Tom Dowling did was terrific.  And I don't want
>to think about some of the klunkers on our own pages. And the point is very
>well taken--I for one will put myself into remedial validation mode.
>
>I have to say that one thing I do knowing it is wrong is embed tags
>inappropriately.  But may I humbly ask the master, if "<h1><b>Really</b>
>Important Header</h1> doesn't work," does that mean you know it breaks all
>browsers or that it just ain't right, HTML-wise?  By the way, I'll also buy
>"it works now, but like the comments issue you will get a nasty surprise
>one or two HTML versions from now when HTML is less tolerant of that
>error."  Not that I would embed a bold tag in a H1 header... but I would
>and do embed break tags inside other tags, and a few other baddies.