subject: A New Way of Thinking [print this page] A New Way of Thinking A New Way of Thinking
HTML 5 comes with more than just a bunch of new elements to increase the semantic juice of your site, it brings with it a whole new way of thinking.
The header-section-footer' approach to markup is one that actually makes a lot of sense when talking strictly about the semantics of information. A section is a block of content, which usually includes an introductory overview of the forthcoming content and additional meta-information about it's content.
A lot of HTML 5 is about following this header-section-footer approach. That is, the page can have a header, section and footer, and within those sections can be another group of headers, sections and footers which take the scope of the parent sectioning element.
Of course, not every sectioning element needs to have all 3 elements. You can use any combination of them or none at all. In fact, it gets quite complex, so you might just want to take a read of the HTML 5 spec yourself.
At first, glance we were not happy with the elements of HTML 5. It feels as though it's directing the page layout. But you need to move past what you know is a header and footer. Breaking down your content to this fundamental level, regardless of design, allows you to structure it with semantic meaning, but still create whatever design you've come up with. With HTML 5 I think we need to be extra careful that we don't fall into the trap of uninspiring design patterns.
