Joshua Allen on the HTML5 semantics debate:

Semantics are only important when they’re understood and used by specialized user agents or search tools. Do we imagine that calendar import of embedded time tags will suddenly become a killer feature of user agents, when microformats have been available for years? Will browsers resurrect the old and abandoned in-chrome site-tree features, and tie them only to nav tags, encouraging web developers to abandon their existing techniques en masse?

Allen’s article also points to this article from back in February by Joshua Allsopp:

By adding these elements, we are addressing the need for greater semantic capability in HTML, but only within a narrow scope. No matter how many elements we bolt on, we will always think of more semantic goodness to add to HTML. And so, having added as many new elements as we like, we still won’t have solved the problem. We don’t need to add specific terms to the vocabulary of HTML, we need to add a mechanism that allows semantic richness to be added to a document as required.

HTML 5, therefore, implements a feature that breaks a sizable percentage of current browsers, and doesn’t really allow us to add richer semantics to the language at all.

Both articles are a much better overview of the debate than what I scrawled out on Friday.

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