Addition of a tag to wrap around html that no semantic mean

[Rhysickle]

Hello

Here is my suggestion for an addition to the html5/xhtml2 specs.

Please let me know what you think.

Rhys

* What is the problem you are trying to solve?

The conflict between designers needing to put in extra tags to make a design function, and the need of screen readers etc... to have clean html, where every element has a meaning.

* What is the feature you are suggesting to help solve it?

A new tag with the semantic meaning "the thing inside me has no meaning". This could be used to enclose all empty html eg. <em>&nbsp;</em>, which is there simply to make the site look right.
* What is the processing model for that feature, including error
handling? This should be very clear, including things such as event timing if the feature involves events, how to create graphs representing the data in the case of semantic proposals, etc.

Not a clue what this means

* Why do you think browsers would implement this feature?

visual browsers almost wouldn't have to as the content of the tag woudl have to be neutral from a display point of view.

Non visual browsers woudl surely see it in their interest to enable their browsers to ignore tags specifically pointed out to them to ignore

* Why do you think authors would use this feature?

Woudl enable designers to design using more tags and still meet accessibility requirements

* What evidence is there that this feature is desparately needed?

Lots of debate with eg image replacement techniques, about whether adding such and such meaningless tag is justified.

* Down sides

Could excuse a creep back to not keeping style and content separate, but this will never be a total reality anyway - look at the number of nested divs designers use. Also there are other incentives for designers to eep design as much as possible in the stylesheets eg ease of implementing site-wide redesign.

[zcorpan]

You could use <div role="presentation"> or <span role="presentation">. In the future, though, you could probably rely on CSS and XBL to solve presentation issues without changing the markup.