Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

HTML HTML Basics Structuring Your Content Using Multiple <header> and <footer> Elements

Posted by Gleb Albovsky
Gleb Albovsky
5,341 Points

Importance of "semantic tags"?

Maybe it sounds silly, but is it real important to use those "semantic" tags for novice? There are a lot more useful tags to learn that would be helpful for beginner rather then these. I find support of screenreaders not a paramount thing to know about html. Please clarify it to me.

2 Answers

Denis Omerović
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Denis Omerović
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 2,438 Points
Denis Omerović
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree
Denis Omerović
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Student 2,438 Points

Hello Gleb, Yes, it is important to use semantic elements. They are here for a reason, well-structured document helps screen readers and also improves SEO. It's much better to use <nav> element instead of div with class nav. If you want to get deeper into this i suggest you to read a lil bit more about html5 and how good structured document looks like. Always use semantic whenever you can.

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,248 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,248 Points

The importance depends a lot on who you're developing for. If your company (or client) requires ADA compliance, which is particularly likely if the project is for a government agency, these things could indeed be important to meeting the requirements of the job.

But if you're putting something together for in-house use where there are no disabled users it might not be critical. But it's "good practice" to use them anyway and create your pages consistently with the recommended structure. And you should at least know that these structures exist and how they are used,.