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08.19.08 The Difference Between Bold and Strong Tags  By Dave Taylor Dave's Answer: While you would think that something so rudimentary as the markup language for Web pages wouldn't be a place where you'd find great controversy, in fact there are two different quite fervent camps in site design that are represented in this debate. What we're talking about is whether markup should be functional or whether it should be presentation-based.  In fact, when I teach web design classes, that's our mantra, because however much you tweak things, the user's tools, preferences and settings can and will doubtless change how they see your material. Now, on the presentation side, designers would point out that while all of this is well and good with something like a citation, there's such a difference between bold and italic in terms of how you read and process the information on the screen that it's of great importance that the content producer have greater control over how it's displayed. 
Which is right? Well, it's hard to say. If you like having more control over the presentation of your material, then the presentation approach is going to be a better match. If you want to focus on your content and let the reader (or, more accurately, their reading tool) do the work, then a more functional approach may be for you. As it turns out, this is somewhat of a moot point given the rise of Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS). CSS brings a far greater level of sophistication to presentation markup and while it initially seems a lot more complicated, the greater power makes it well worth learning.  Therefore it does behoove you to learn at least the dozen basic HTML markup tags for just those situations. In fact, I have a brief article on my Web site that gives you just this list, with a helpful explanation of each tag: Essential HTML tags bloggers need to know. My recommendation for when you must use HTML? Use the presentation-based approach, not the functional approach. 
About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues. Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs. AskDaveTaylor.com http://www.intuitive.com/blog/ |
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