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Discussion on: Stop using so many divs! An intro to semantic HTML

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riccardomessineo profile image
Riccardo Messineo

Using this "new" tags, should we be anyhow concerned about compatibility?
Yes I am thinking about ie :)

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kenbellows profile image
Ken Bellows • Edited

Nope! All of the Semantic elements except for <main>, which was added later in the game, are recognized all the way back to IE9. And even if you're still supporting IE6 for some reason, the nice thing about HTML is that browsers are pretty forgiving, and they aren't going to error or anything if you use an unknown tag, though I believe the default display mode for an unknown tag is inline, so if you really are supporting very old browsers you may need to add this CSS

aside, article, footer, header, main, nav, section, .....(list all the semantic blocks you're using) {
    display: block;
}

This is included in most CSS reset files, which I strongly recommend if you're dealing with very old browsers, so you probably won't have to di this by hand anyhow.