HTML: Semantic elements
Developers use the <div> and <span> tags when creating an HTML document. They allow you to create a block or inline element, which helps you create independent blocks with different designs. But, for the browser and search engines, these blocks are not semantic, i.e., they don't directly say what they contain.
Since the first versions of the HTML standard, tags have always had semantics, such as <p> - paragraph, <table> - table, <ol>, <ul> - lists. But these tags cannot mark up the "header", "footer", or "sidebar" of the site.
Before the release of the HTML5 standard, classes or identifiers were used to mark up such areas. For example, like this:
<div id="header">
// Here will be the header of the site. Usually, it has a logo, contact information, or a menu
</div>
<div id="main">
// Unique site content
</div>
<div id="footer">
// Site footer. Usually, contact information, an additional menu, and legal information about the company are contained here
</div>
This solved problems from the developers' point of view because navigation through the code had become faster, but, from the browser's point of view, the situation hadn't changed. Browsers didn't understand that id="header" is used on the site to indicate the header of the site, and developers named areas themselves since there was no single standard.
With the release of the HTML5 standard, new tags appeared that denote the semantics of areas of the page, not just text.
The main semantic tags are:
<article><aside><footer><header><main><nav><section>
Most of the elements are intuitive and you can use them straight away in your own documents. You can now remake the example above using the new HTML elements:
<header>
// Here will be the header of the site. Usually, it has a logo, contact information, or a menu
</header>
<main>
// Unique site content
</main>
<footer>
// Site footer. Usually, contact information, an additional menu, and legal information about the company are contained here
</footer>
Note that there are no identifiers in the layout and it's cleaner. In this module, we'll look at basic semantic tags with a single example. From lesson to lesson, we'll add more parts to the page and refine it.
Instructions
Create a header and footer markup using the new HTML5 semantic elements
The exercise doesn't pass checking. What to do? 😶
If you've reached a deadlock it's time to ask your question in the «Discussions». How ask a question correctly:
- Be sure to attach the test output, without it it's almost impossible to figure out what went wrong, even if you show your code. It's complicated for developers to execute code in their heads, but having a mistake before their eyes most probably will be helpful.
In my environment the code works, but not here 🤨
Tests are designed so that they test the solution in different ways and against different data. Often the solution works with one kind of input data but doesn't work with others. Check the «Tests» tab to figure this out, you can find hints at the error output.
My code is different from the teacher's one 🤔
It's fine. 🙆 One task in programming can be solved in many different ways. If your code passed all tests, it complies with the task conditions.
In some rare cases, the solution may be adjusted to the tests, but this can be seen immediately.
I've read the lessons but nothing is clear 🙄
It's hard to make educational materials that will suit everyone. We do our best but there is always something to improve. If you see a material that is not clear to you, describe the problem in “Discussions”. It will be great if you'll write unclear points in the question form. Usually, we need a few days for corrections.
By the way, you can participate in courses improvement. There is a link below to the lessons course code which you can edit right in your browser.