Question

Reading an article on the <article> tag on HTML5, I really think my biggest confusion is in the first question of this section:

Using <article> gives more semantic meaning to the content. By contrast <section> is only a block of related content, and <div> is only a block of content… To decide which of these three elements is appropriate, choose the first suitable option:

1. Would the content would make sense on its own in a feed reader? If so, use <article>.
2. Is the content related? If so, use <section>.
3. Finally, if there’s no semantic relationship, use <div>.

So I guess my question is really: What types of content belong in a feed reader?

Answer 1

The W3C spec leaves a lot open to interpretation and it ultimately comes down to the author’s opinion. Here is a short and simple answer in the form of a question:

What are the primary significant pieces of content you want to share on the page?

Here are a few examples:

• On this very page, each answer could be an article.
• On flickr each photo displayed in the photostream could be considered an article.
• On dribbble each shot displayed on the page could be an article.
• On google each search result listed could be an article.
• On a blog each article.. well each article could be an article.
• On a blog page with an article and a series of comments you could have two major sections. One with an article and another for comments in which each comment could be considered an article.

It’s the author’s discretion as to how far they want to go. Most blog authors have an RSS feed for their articles, but others may also provide feeds for comments, and shared links.

A lot of people have written on this subject. For further information I highly recommend reading:

• http://html5doctor.com/the-article-element/ (you’ve already shared this)
• http://www.impressivewebs.com/html5-section/
• http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2011/04/html5/html5-section-or-article