[wp-hackers] Post style buttons

[Robert Deaton]

Okay, so, I'm going to wrap up replies to various people in here in a
single mail.

First off, I agree with the original e-mail. I believe the text of
buttons should be kept as it currently is. In addition, I believe that
the buttons need to be switched away from using <strong> and <em> and
moved to some other tag such as span with a class added to it, or
potentially even just a class added to each of the above elements.
Here's my justifications.

Familiarity. Let's not go confuse the living crap out of the users who
don't know that "strong" and "em" are apparently (but not really)
synonyms for bold and italicize. People are familiar with this method
of textformatting from everywhere on their computers, from simple word
processors to Microsoft Word to their mail clients to picking their
font in any old application. The buttons as they are have meaning,
let's not make them senseless to anyone who doesn't know their HTML
tags.

Formatting text vs Formatting language. To me, WordPress is not the
place to format language, which is what the strong and em tags are
really made to do. They're made to denote varying levels of emphasis,
and consequently _most_ visual browsers will display the emphasized
text as bold or italicized, but this is not a requirement. In reality,
you are not telling the browser that you want your text to be bold or
italicized, you're telling it that that portion of the text is meant
to be emphasized in some way. A browser for the blind may change the
pitch and tone as it reads the emphazied part of the text, to show
that emphasis through audio.

When I click those buttons, I have no intention of marking up my
language as having emphasis. If I was mentioning the title of a book,
play, film, or other items, and wanted that to be italicized (or
underlined, depending on preference), I don't want any sort of
"emphasis" on the text, I just want it to be formatted differently.

If people want to markup their language and not their text, I think
the buttons need to be separate. They are two separate tasks and they
should not be jammed together into one button.


On 2/24/07, Elliotte Harold <elharo at metalab.unc.edu> wrote:
> There's a disconnect between what the buttons say and what they do.

I agree, I just think you're trying to solve the issue backwards.

On 2/25/07, Andrew Ferguson <andrew at fergcorp.com> wrote:
> In terms of looking toward the future, I believe that <b> and <i> are going
> to be depreciated in XHTML 2. I'm not sure of the release timeline for XHTML
> 2, but it doesn't make sense to me to update WP to reflect what the buttons
> are now when the the tags will have to change shortly any way.

I never said use <b> and <i>, classes on a span or any other element
will do, including on the strong and em elements if someone so decides
that way (although I personally think its wrong to assume when I want
to italicize my text I also mean to emphasize my writing)

On 2/24/07, ryan fitzer <ryanfitzer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Class-itis will ensue.

Classes were made for formatting and styling. Class-itis is a good thing.
-- 
--Robert Deaton
http://lushlab.com