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
Paul Barron
6,595 Pointselements
Why make header, section, footer elements? Why not make divs instead? What's the purpose of the former element tags?
6 Answers
Adam East
2,424 PointsYou can use either one.
However keeping the structure of a website easy to follow is key to building a strong website foundation.
Take this for example.
If you were working on a site with someone else and they said the code in the header needs to be edited to "This example here"
You would then navigate to the header of that page.
If the header was instead named html <div id="my_websites_top_bar_that_looks_like_a_header"> </div>
If would not make much sense right? :P Granted you can just name the id header, but why write extra code when header is faster and more semantic? :P
Emilio Queiroz
3,710 PointsMany of existing web sites today contains HTML code like this: <div id="nav">, <div class="header">, or <div id="footer">, to indicate navigation links, header, and footer.
HTML5 offers new semantic elements to clearly define different parts of a web page: <header> <nav> <section> <article> <aside> <figure> <figcaption> <footer> <details> <summary> <mark> <time>
see in this page: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.asp
Cena Mayo
55,236 PointsThis StackOverflow article has some good commentary on this. Basically, in HTML5, divs have no semantic meaning, but elements like header, section, etc do. They also help increase accessibility on your site for things like screenreaders for the visually impaired.
Nemanja Veselinovic
1,093 PointsHi Paul,
Nice to see you around. I started using Tree House to re-learn HTML/CSS as I knew some of it before. It these tutorials (at very beggining) I guess Nick is using those header, sections and footer elements to simplify the website structure to begginers. Using div's right away will just confuse them more. At this first and start lessions, as yet css is not fully included, its good to start with simplified elements like Nick did.
I haven't looked at the lessions after, but I think thats the trick.
Paul Barron
6,595 PointsThanks for your responses. I kind of jumped into web design head first and am grateful for your insights.
Adam East
2,424 PointsThat is the best way to start! If you take it slow you really do not learn as much as just jumping in an learning to swim. Welcome to Web Design.