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Bug 7483 - The footer element desperately needs to be able to contain sectioning content descendents, most importantly "nav". Under the current specification, I will just end up using div class="footer" so my footers can contain sectioning content.
Summary: The footer element desperately needs to be able to contain sectioning content...
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: pre-LC1 HTML5 spec (editor: Ian Hickson) (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P3 normal
Target Milestone: LC
Assignee: Ian 'Hixie' Hickson
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/curr...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: NE
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-09-03 07:20 UTC by contributor
Modified: 2010-10-04 13:58 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments

Description contributor 2009-09-03 07:20:42 UTC 
Section: http://whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-footer-element

Comment:
The footer element desperately needs to be able to contain sectioning content descendents, most importantly "nav". Under the current specification, I will just end up using div class="footer" so my footers can contain sectioning content.

Posted from: 203.36.167.2
Comment 1 Dylan Parry 2009-09-03 14:50:08 UTC 
Completely agree with this. Many current sites will employ a large footer section at the bottom of the page containing basic site information, lists of related pages, recent updates and popular articles. Without the ability to include sectioning elements within the footer element, this is not possible in HTML5 without resorting to using divs, thus negating the purpose, and indeed usefulness of the footer element.
Comment 2 Eric Meyer 2009-09-03 15:06:50 UTC 
Proposed fix: change the content model to state:

"Flow content, but with no header or footer element descendants."
Comment 3 Richard Rutter 2009-09-03 15:07:58 UTC 
I concur. Take for example the orange/brown area at the bottom of http://clagnut.com/. It's repeated throughout the site and is contained within a div of id "footer". It is a footer by almost anyone's definition. And it contains headings, paragraphs and lists, of which only paragraphs are currently allowed in the HTML 5 footer element. My suggestion would be to allow footer to contain the same elements that are allowed in header.
Comment 4 Eric Meyer 2009-09-04 19:57:44 UTC 
Does http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=3750&to=3751 mean the change is being undertaken?  (I'm 99% sure it does, but I'd like confirmation so I can fill in that last 1%.)
Comment 5 Maciej Stachowiak 2010-03-14 14:50:33 UTC 
This bug predates the HTML Working Group Decision Policy.

If you are satisfied with the resolution of this bug, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:
  http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

This bug is now being moved to VERIFIED. Please respond within two weeks. If this bug is not closed, reopened or escalated within two weeks, it may be marked as NoReply and will no longer be considered a pending comment.