Comments on: Class Presentation

By: Dean

Dean — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 02:56:53 +0000

I like using ’standalone’ for an image as Eric describes. In my mind it is structural rather than presentational — it says that the image sits apart (or “stands alone”) from the rest of the content just like ‘entry’ is used to single out individual blog entries. I use ’standalone’ myself and intend to continue using it.

I don’t know what to do for ‘border’ though.

A problem I have is what class names to give to other images like the ones floated within an article, or photos of the author, etc. Two people above suggested ‘illustrative’ for the former. Maybe that’s good, I don’t know. It assumes all such images would always be floated right, or always floated left. What if I want variety like in a newspaper? Speaking of that, I wonder what class names / naming conventions are used by printers. We’ve already adopted their use of ‘masthead’ — maybe they have some other good ideas we can use.

I wish I had more ideas on this because, in this blog topic at least, there isn’t a clear naming convention yet. I’ll have to go see how Eric names his floated images. ;-)

By: Eric Thompson

Eric Thompson — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 20:49:09 +0000

I'd have to second the idea of enclosing the imgs inside ems and/or strongs, if they're meant to be emphasized. If not, well, then I think you're stuck with purely presentational classes for them.

By: Steve Clay

Steve Clay — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 20:19:12 +0000

I have a couple potential solutions, one of which is to use Javascript to add presentational classNames so they stay out of the document...

By: Larry Israel

Larry Israel — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 06:26:06 +0000

In some cases, you just need two or three different styles, and the reason for styling differently may be tricky to describe in a class name, so why not give them generic but meaningless names? On a business site where I need two different styles for tables (yes, tabular data) and am faced with a similar naming issue, I've sometimes resorted to simply: .tablestyle1 and .tablestyle2 or table.style1 and table.style2 I avoid such names where possible, but there are some cases where nothing else seems particularly better. Eric's example may or may not have more meaningful solution than this. If you want to change one class of styles later, you can do so without it being misnamed. A disadvantage is that you sometimes forget which style is which and have to refer to the style sheet. Such naming and process is similar to what I've done when working on technical documents in FrameMaker where my template has a couple table styles named generically, and this seems like a reasonable test or comparison. I think it's interesting to imagine what you would do if you were using the Styles feature while working in (for example) InDesign or another DTP program.

By: chris

chris — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 06:03:02 +0000

I like your comment, Eric, where you warn off those who would tell you not to worry about this. That you enjoy pondering such quandries. Well, let’s take it a bit further. I like enclosing especially spectacular bits of text with tildes and other typographical bric-a-brac. Should such bracketing elements be set off with a css selector? How about some block-quoted ascii-art?
.art { // here we present the presentation.... font:: monospace; padding: 10px; }
It’s amusing to see this discussion enter the realm of Austin’s demarcation of the “performative.” Eric, you should check out Derrida’s “Limited Inc.” for an amusing consideration of the philosophical ground on which you are starting to tread. CSS designers aren’t the first to become pleasantly (if maddeningly) distracted with this question…..

By: Jeff Leombruno

Jeff Leombruno — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 20:45:08 +0000

Eric,

Without knowing under what circumstances you choose to “border” your imags, one can’t really address the question.

Yes, the class of “border” is not correct, as at some point in the future you could decide that these images should not be bordered.

Even another class name that is presentational, but not as specific as “border” could work for you here.

or something of the sort. :-)

By: Jens Meiert

Jens Meiert — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 08:38:08 +0000

Just determine the function of the element you need a class or ID for, and if it becomes too special (for example, you might need it for some other elements, too), choose a more generic name (this demands some foresight). Of course generalizing, but almost always sufficient. - Jens

By: Dave Hodder

Dave Hodder — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:54:24 +0000

If img is a block element, and the purpose of the border is to emphasise or draw the eye to the image, how about class="blockemphasis"? Or alternatively forget about class and place you img within em?

By: Joel Bernstein

Joel Bernstein — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 07:06:20 +0000

Maybe he’s just testing us :D

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 04:40:24 +0000

I figured Eric would have chimed in by now.

By: Joel Bernstein

Joel Bernstein — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 21:01:22 +0000

But images are presentational, right?

Some images are indeed presentational (backgrounds, borders, banner logos), but these shouldn't even have tags; they should be added in later with CSS image replacement or DOM scripting. Anything that does get an img tag is content, like text, and the classname applied to that tag should describe something meaningful about the content of the image, just like the classname of a span describes the text content inside it.

So what"s wrong with defining their presentational context along with semantic context.

Because the presentational context could change down the line, and suddenly you have a bunch of images with "border" classes which aren't bordered, and a bunch of images without that class which are.

(I mean, it"s not like you"re saying class=”thickgreenborder”)

So you're saying that as long as we use vague presentational classnames, it makes it all better? Classnames describe content; they do not describe what we want to have happen to the content later.

By: Block Sheep

Block Sheep — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 18:10:00 +0000

I agree, it’s going to always difficult to apply semantic classification to an image, because it’s not something humans do very often — whereas semantic classification is a natural way to structure language/text.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 17:53:26 +0000

But images are presentational, right? So what’s wrong with defining their presentational context (I mean, it’s not like you’re saying class=”thickgreenborder”) along with semantic context. It’s essentially the same idea as comment 6, but more flexible.

By: Vincent Murphy

Vincent Murphy — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 12:17:00 +0000

First, glad to see that other folks have the same naming trouble that I tend to have. ;)

I think that Tom, up there in comment 11, has a good solution. Why create a new class name when there’s a tag that does what you want: the strong or em tag would work well in a situation like this, it seems. You really are adding some emphasis to an item, in this case a border. Very appropriate for the task at hand.

By: Adrian D.

Adrian D. — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 07:51:51 +0000

There are some other sort-of-presentational class names hanging around my site, too. standalone is used when an image, or set of images, stands on its own, as opposed to illustrative images that are floated. The intent is presentational, though again, standalone doesn"t say exactly how the images stand alone. It just says that they do.

It seems that illustrative images are the exception here. How about class="illustrative" for the floated images, and leave the standalone images unclassed?