J.4. Headers

Some text in an XHTML document might be more important than other text. For example, the text in this section is considered more important than a footnote. XHTML provides six headers, called header elements, for specifying the relative importance of information. Figure J.2 demonstrates these elements (h1 through h6).

Figure J.2. Header elements h1 tHRough H6.

"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 9 10

 1  "1.0"?>
 2  "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
 3 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
 4
 5 
 6 
 7
 8 

XHTML headers 11 12 13

14 15

Level 1 Header

16

Level 2 header

17

Level 3 header

18

Level 4 header

19

Level 5 header

20

Level 6 header

21 22 23

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Header element h1 (line 15) is considered the most significant header and is rendered in a larger font than the other five headers (lines 1620). Each successive header element (i.e., H2, h3, etc.) is rendered in a smaller font.

Portability Tip J.1

The text size used to display each header element can vary significantly between browsers.

 

Look-and-Feel Observation J.1

Placing a header at the top of every XHTML page helps viewers understand the purpose of each page.

 

Look-and-Feel Observation J.2

Use larger headers to emphasize more important sections of a Web page.