I see every source saying to use <strong> instead of <b> yet both seem to work fine. Can someone explain why this is? Did the w3 consortium arbitrarily decide this?

Taken from Mozilla's site: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Element/strong


It is often confusing to new developers why there are so many ways to express the same thing on a rendered website. Bold and Strong are perhaps one of the most common. Why use <strong></strong> vs <b></b> you have to type a whole lot more with strong and it produces the exact same result right?

Perhaps not, strong is a logical state, and bold is a physical state. Logical states separate presentation from the content, and by doing so allows for it to be expressed in many different ways, perhaps instead of rendering some text as bold you want to render it red, or a different size, or underlined, or whatever. It makes more sense to change the presentational properties of strong than it does bold. This is because of bold is a physical state, there is no separation of presentation and content, making bold do anything other than bold text would be confusing and illogical.


Hope that helps some...

Originally Posted by lemondime

Taken from Mozilla's site: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Element/strong


It is often confusing to new developers why there are so many ways to express the same thing on a rendered website. Bold and Strong are perhaps one of the most common. Why use <strong></strong> vs <b></b> you have to type a whole lot more with strong and it produces the exact same result right?

Perhaps not, strong is a logical state, and bold is a physical state. Logical states separate presentation from the content, and by doing so allows for it to be expressed in many different ways, perhaps instead of rendering some text as bold you want to render it red, or a different size, or underlined, or whatever. It makes more sense to change the presentational properties of strong than it does bold. This is because of bold is a physical state, there is no separation of presentation and content, making bold do anything other than bold text would be confusing and illogical.


Hope that helps some...

In that case you could technically use both.

Yeah, I do not see the difference, I use bold, and unless the HTML 5 spec discontinues the use of the "< b >" tag, I will continue to use it.

Here's my stab at it ...

From what I understand, <strong> is semantically correct and <b> is not. One of the pillars of the so-called "Web 2.0" is that meaning should be separated from presentation. You should use (X)HTML for meaning, and CSS for presentation (i.e. how something looks). The problem of using <b> is that you are using HTML to express how something looks. The existence of a <b> tag is probably something of an accident in HTML's history. If the <b> tag actually meant something like "I am making a bold and audacious statement here", then it would be semantic.

If you use <strong> then you mean you want to put strong emphasis on something. Personally I don't like <strong>, I would prefer a tag like <important>. However, it is agreed that <strong> carries the meaning of "importance". Or, just use the <em> tag meaning emphasis, and style it to look physically bold. It is irrelevant the default renderin of an <em> tag looks italicized.

As a rule of thumb: When using HTML tags don't think of how they look, think of what they mean. Don't think of <h1> <h2> and <h3> tags in terms of size, think of them as first level, second level and third level headings. You would most likely use CSS to override the default browser preferences for how those tags are rendered.

http://blue-anvil.com/archives/guide...mantic-mark-up

Good stab.. and right on point
If you want to write clean, semantic markup, then you use <strong> and <em> as opposed to <b> and <i>.

Absolutely - <strong> and <em> as opposed <b> and <i>.

Unless there is a reason to do otherwise - for example, if one were coding for WML, there might be an argument for using <b> and <i> since it's going to save bytes in the long run.

What's interesting is that even in Dreamweaver, there is a switch to toggle between the two approaches.

Semantically, however, <strong> and <em> is correct.

~R~

ok, i will change it as soon as i can..

but i still like <B> and <I> more, quicker and easier!

I prefer to use <b>

Originally Posted by helloworlder

Here's my stab at it ...

From what I understand, <strong> is semantically correct and <b> is not. One of the pillars of the so-called "Web 2.0" is that meaning should be separated from presentation. You should use (X)HTML for meaning, and CSS for presentation (i.e. how something looks). The problem of using <b> is that you are using HTML to express how something looks. The existence of a <b> tag is probably something of an accident in HTML's history. If the <b> tag actually meant something like "I am making a bold and audacious statement here", then it would be semantic.

If you use <strong> then you mean you want to put strong emphasis on something. Personally I don't like <strong>, I would prefer a tag like <important>. However, it is agreed that <strong> carries the meaning of "importance". Or, just use the <em> tag meaning emphasis, and style it to look physically bold. It is irrelevant the default renderin of an <em> tag looks italicized.

As a rule of thumb: When using HTML tags don't think of how they look, think of what they mean. Don't think of <h1> <h2> and <h3> tags in terms of size, think of them as first level, second level and third level headings. You would most likely use CSS to override the default browser preferences for how those tags are rendered.

http://blue-anvil.com/archives/guide...mantic-mark-up

Let's say that's the truth, how would you make text italic, underline, strike through, etc?

For TRUE italics, you still use the <i> tag, for EMPHASIZED text, you use <em> instead. Underlines on the web means a LINK - if it's not a link, do NOT underline it, use <em> to show EMPHASIS or use <strong>. Strike-through is an editing mark, it's ok to leave that as it is.

Both <strong> and <b> work fine the <b> tag is just old and may some day be taken away.
Also do not give to much credit to the w3c because if you go to any major website and run their html through the w3c validation service almost all the major sites have errors and its not really affecting their websites.

here is my idea.
for html is use <b>
and <strong> for CSS

just an idea.

just do it as LadynRed said. although personally i would use <em> instead of <i> anyway and simply redefine <em> as
em {
font-style:italic;
}
just to make sure, although pretty much every browser a the moment represents em as italics anyway

I read on a couple of different sites that <strong> is better than <b> for Search Engine Optimization purposes.

I prefer to use <b> as well, just a personal preference I guess.

Originally Posted by beanguy

I prefer to use <b> as well, just a personal preference I guess.

no, it's not personal preference it is as ladynred explained - it means something when it si in strong, whereas it just looks like something when it's b.

man, it's not that difficult: just use strong and forget b.

How I use both:

<strong>My Special Product Name:</strong><!--meaningful text-->
<b>Click Here:</b><!--non meaningful text-->

And either tag can be styled however I please of course.

I see most top ranked websites use strong as opposed to bold. I think its more beneficial for seo.

I think its more beneficial for seo.

The search engines don't care at all !!!!