Table of Contents for

The Modern Web

Summary

In this chapter, I’ve covered a core function of a good website or application: the underlying structure. Using markup in a correct and meaningful way lays the foundations for everything else I’m going to cover in this book and will be extremely important to making sure your own sites are maintainable and scalable.

I’ve been a little mean to HTML5 structural elements, but whether you use them or not, you should definitely consider using WAI-ARIA in your project, regardless of the context. Content accessibility is the bedrock of the Web, and even if you use roles and nothing else, you and your users win.

You also got a look at adding context to your sites through semantic and structured data, and you learned the importance of aboutness. The approach you take will, of course, depend on the context you’re making it for. Building a large database-led website with lots of consumer-focused content probably means you want to add lots of semantic richness in order to get the most from search engines and crawlers. In this case, you’ll want to consider RDFa, microformats, and/or microdata. Building a hybrid app for mobile devices, however, will make that much less of a consideration.