The Montoya Herald, a weblog about Blueprint, jQuery, design, music and life, publishing on the web since September 2005. Written by Christian Montoya: developer, designer and entrepreneur.

Waiter, this tag soup tastes like trash!

Posted on October 11, 2006.

Every time I visit a blog/website-with-news that has those little calendar-looking date blocks on each post, my inner moron immediately thinks, "hey, maybe this site is using the markup I recommended in my Hot Dates with CSS demonstration." My inner moron never learns. Upon a view-source, I correct my inner moron for the umpteenth time.

What gets me every time, however, is the markup that these sites do use. Honestly, some developers out there just slap tags on the page like they are making a collage for a kindergarten class. A collage that's guaranteed to get an F. No star, no smiley-face… none of these: :).

Today I came across a site that had, I kid you not, the following markup for the dates:

<div class="dateBox">
       <h3>sat</h3>
       <h1>07</h1>
       <h2>oct</h2>
</div>

Honestly… honestly… honestly… this is headdesk material. I can't even imagine the logic behind this. Whoever designed the site went through the trouble of styling these blocks to make them look like any other date blocks, but these must be a real pain for non-visual agents/users.

Pretend Screenreader: There are 10 level 1 headers on this page. 07. 04. 29. 22. 17…

Personified Googlebot: WTF mate? Header "07," subheader "oct," subheader "mon," header "04," …

Can you imagine seeing these in a feedreader? Any other agents that would be punk'd by this garbage markup?

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1 Comments

1. Antonio on October 11, 2006

   My eyes! My eyes!