Sections in an HTML Document

Clarify the meaning of the acronyms on your web site.

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For an HTML 5 processor to tell the difference between site-wide headings and page headings, the child elements of the body tag may include only a specific subset of the valid tags that a >body< can contain:

optional <hn > heading tags
an optional <nav> tag
a single <article> tag
an optional <aisde> tag

This is an example of the structure of a page with a site-wide heading:


                                             <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
                        

                        <!DOCTYPE html>
                        

                        <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
                        

                          <head>
                        

                             <title>Page Title</title>
                        

                          </head>
                        

                          <body>
                        

                            <h1>My Example Site</h1>
                        

                            <nav>
                        

                               ...
                        

                            </nav>
                        

                            <article>
                        

                               <header>
                        

                                  <h2>Page Heading</h2>
                        

                                  <nav>
                        

                                     ...
                        

                                  </nav>
                        

                               </header>
                        

                               <p>This is the introduction to the article.
                        

                               </p>
                        

                               <section>
                        

                                  <hgroup>
                        

                                     <h3>Section Heading</h3>
                        

                                     <h4>Subheading for this section</h4>
                        

                                  </hgroup>
                        

                                  <p>This is the content of the section.
                        

                                  </p>
                        

                               </section>
                        

                               <footer>...</footer>
                        

                            </article>
                        

                            <aside>
                        

                               ...
                        

                            </aside>
                        

                          </body>
                        

                        </html>

You can put the site-wide heading and navigation in a template to avoid having to code it on every page and to reduce page load times.


                                             <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
                        

                        <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="/site-template.xsl"?>
                        

                        <!DOCTYPE html>
                        

                        <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
                        

                          <head>
                        

                             <title>Page Title</title>
                        

                          </head>
                        

                          <body>
                        

                            <article>
                        

                               <header>
                        

                                  <h2>Page Heading</h2>
                        

                                  <nav>
                        

                                     ...
                        

                                  </nav>
                        

                               </header>
                        

                               <p>This is the introduction to the article.
                        

                               </p>
                        

                               <section>
                        

                                  <hgroup>
                        

                                     <h3>Section Heading</h3>
                        

                                     <h4>Subheading for this section</h4>
                        

                                  </hgroup>
                        

                                  <p>This is the content of the section.
                        

                                  </p>
                        

                               </section>
                        

                               <footer>...</footer>
                        

                            </article>
                        

                            <aside>
                        

                               ...
                        

                            </aside>
                        

                          </body>
                        

                        </html>

Last updated Sunday September 19, 2010

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