Does it take a geek....

[straycat]

To find this website funny? I think it's hilarious, but it's quite possible that makes me quite sad....


iCanHasCheezburgers

[Kel_Warminster]

Originally Posted by straycat264

To find this website funny? I think it's hilarious, but it's quite possible that makes me quite sad....


iCanHasCheezburgers

I thought it was good for a giggle...does that make me just as bad as you hun?

Thanks for sharing

[David Franklin]

Also...

[DundeeDancer]

I don't get it, I've failed the geek test ...
seems just like a cute kitten joke to me on: 2/1 and 1/1

[David Franklin]

Originally Posted by DundeeDancer

I don't get it, I've failed the geek test ...
seems just like a cute kitten joke to me on: 2/1 and 1/1

If you are using HTML, <i> and </i> are the tags for putting something in italics. Does that make it funnier?

[Of course, I suspect I know the answer to that question...]

[DundeeDancer]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

If you are using HTML, <i> and </i> are the tags for putting something in italics. Does that make it funnier?

Thanks, at least I "get it" now.

Seeing as I'm meant to be an IT consultant it not good I didn't get it right away,
*whimper* I'm away to play with my rich client tool now, this tag / internet thing will never catch on

[killingtime]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

If you are using HTML, <i> and </i> are the tags for putting something in italics.

Use <em>, people .

[Dreadful Scathe]

lolz catz are blocked here - they are funny though

[David Franklin]

Originally Posted by killingtime

Use <em>, people .

I'm no HTML expert, but my understanding is that if you want italics you use <i>, if you want to indicate emphasis, you use <em>. <em> is conventionally rendered using italics, but doesn't have to be.

So if you definitely want italics, as is obviously the case here, then you should use <i>, not <em>.

[killingtime]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

I'm no HTML expert, but my understanding is that if you want italics you use <i>, if you want to indicate emphasis, you use <em>. <em> is conventionally rendered using italics, but doesn't have to be.

Well the W3C are in favour of deprecating <i> and <b> as they have direct typeface meaning rather than <em> and <strong> that don't (though I'd debate <strong> myself). If someone is using a screen reader the note to emphasize something is meaningful, the note to make it italic is not (unless it goes "start italic 'some thing' end italic" I guess). But you are correct in using them anyway as I don't think it is until XHTML 1.1 they are deprecated (I'd look it up but apparently the W3C has blocked us ) and I'm not sure we'll ever see that really being used on the Internet (let alone XHTML 2.0).

[dep]

Originally Posted by killingtime

Well the W3C are in favour of deprecating <i> and <b> as they have direct typeface meaning rather than <em> and <strong> that don't (though I'd debate <strong> myself). If someone is using a screen reader the note to emphasize something is meaningful, the note to make it italic is not (unless it goes "start italic 'some thing' end italic" I guess). But you are correct in using them anyway as I don't think it is until XHTML 1.1 they are deprecated (I'd look it up but apparently the W3C has blocked us ) and I'm not sure we'll ever see that really being used on the Internet (let alone XHTML 2.0).

What?

[ducasi]

Originally Posted by David Franklin

I'm no HTML expert, but my understanding is that if you want italics you use <i>, if you want to indicate emphasis, you use <em>. <em> is conventionally rendered using italics, but doesn't have to be.

So if you definitely want italics, as is obviously the case here, then you should use <i>, not <em>.

Shouldn't you be using Catscading Style Sheets?

[Rachel]

Originally Posted by killingtime

Well the W3C are in favour of deprecating <i> and <b> as they have direct typeface meaning rather than <em> and <strong> that don't (though I'd debate <strong> myself). If someone is using a screen reader the note to emphasize something is meaningful, the note to make it italic is not (unless it goes "start italic 'some thing' end italic" I guess). But you are correct in using them anyway as I don't think it is until XHTML 1.1 they are deprecated (I'd look it up but apparently the W3C has blocked us ) and I'm not sure we'll ever see that really being used on the Internet (let alone XHTML 2.0).

Originally Posted by dep

What?

I believe Gary's talking accessibility issues for blind and partially sighted people.

If something's marked with an emphasis tag, that can be understood by anyone, even if they can't see the screen. However, what do italics and bolds really mean to someone who has never seen print?

And how often are italics and bold used merely for decorative purposes - to make the text 'look' pretty - rather than to emphasise a point?

Rachel

[David Franklin]

Originally Posted by Rachel

I believe Gary's talking accessibility issues for blind and partially sighted people.

And how often are italics and bold used merely for decorative purposes - to make the text 'look' pretty - rather than to emphasise a point?

I'd be the first to admit that I overuse bold for emphasis; ironically enough, partly because I find the visual difference between normal and italic text small enough that I often don't notice it.

Nonetheless, often people use <i> tags precisely because they really do mean italics. The original post is a case in point: it's a visual gag based on <I> </I> tags causing everything between them to be sloped to the right as with italics. So it makes no sense to say "should have been <em> tags instead".

[Twirly]

Originally Posted by dep

What?

Can't we just have more cute kitten pictures please?!

[dep]

Originally Posted by Twirly

Can't we just have more cute kitten pictures please?!

there's already 233pages of the cuties.
Go salivate.

ps,
does [em] work on this site?

[killingtime]

Originally Posted by Rachel

And how often are italics and bold used merely for decorative purposes - to make the text 'look' pretty - rather than to emphasise a point?

Of course they shouldn't be. Which is why <i> is being removed as anything that is just style should be all part of the CSS.

Originally Posted by David Franklin

So it makes no sense to say "should have been <em> tags instead".

Sorry my reply was really just a slight gag based around popular web standard opinions .

Originally Posted by dep

does [em] work on this site?

Nah, but then that's BBCode not HTML.

Originally Posted by ducasi

Shouldn't you be using Catscading Style Sheets?

Of course! But you should still use <em> rather than <span style="font-style: italic"> as the former is semantically meaningful but the latter is not. If you like you could do something like

em
{
color: pink;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: normal;
}

to have some nice bold pink text that's emphasized rather than the usual browser choice of rendering it in italics.

[David Franklin]

Originally Posted by killingtime

Of course they shouldn't be. Which is why <i> is being removed as anything that is just style should be all part of the CSS.

Do you have an actual cite that <i> is being removed? (It's not that I doubt you, but I'd like to see the official reasoning). I had a look on W3C, the (draft) spec for HTML 5 still has <i> in there:

Originally Posted by w3c

The <i> element represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose, such as a taxonomic designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, a thought, a ship name, or some other prose whose typical typographic presentation is italicized.

The i element should be used as a last resort when no other element is more appropriate. In particular, citations should use the <cite> element, defining instances of terms should use the <dfn> element, stress emphasis should use the <em> element, importance should be denoted with the <strong> element, quotes should be marked up with the <q> element, and small print should use the <small> element.

Even if <i> were to be deprecated, that is a far cry from it being made obsolete. And my understanding is that it would have to be made obsolete in order for browsers to stop supporting it.

Sorry my reply was really just a slight gag based around popular web standard opinions .

Someone tried to make a similar gag on the ICanHasCheezeburger website:

The and tags in HTML have been deprecated.

The W3C now recommends the use of and instead.

How I ROFL'd...

Nah, but then that's BBCode not HTML.

In my experience, I know a lot more people who understand BBCode than people who understand HTML, so that's a bit of a problem for anyone wanting to deprecate <i>. That is, they are saying "I want this in italics", not "I want this emphasized", so something that parses [i] into <em> is actually causing semantic confusion, not helping it.

Of course! But you should still use <em> rather than <span style="font-style: italic"> as the former is semantically meaningful but the latter is not.

I am absolutely certain that if <em> does replace <i>, a large proportion of the time you see it used, it will be because people want something to appear in italics, not because they want to emphasise it. So it may be semantically meaningful, but most of the time it's going to be semantically wrong, too. Far better, in my mind, to persuade people to use <em> for emphasis which I agree makes sense, but let them still use <i> when they simply want italics.

[Gadget]

Originally Posted by Rachel

And how often are italics and bold used merely for decorative purposes - to make the text 'look' pretty - rather than to emphasise a point?

Rachel

Awwww, you don't have to use bold and italics to look pretty