<B> better or <strong> better?

Which tag is better?

[GilbertZ]

Reading Brett's great article on how to build a successful site in 12 months or so, I noticed his suggestion...what was it? Keywords in Title, Once in H1, once in bold, once in italics...does this still stand?

And which bold? Isn't <b> deprecated in favor of <strong>?

[kstprod]

Gilbert,

Yes, Brett's tips still stand, but don't forget the ever important getting relevant links. Keep in mind that in my experience, when using his tips, it works so much better if your page has about 100 words or more. Anything less than that, seems to make all that optimizing overkill. This is just my experience though.

I have actually been wondering the same thing with the "bold" issue. I've seen both methods used and wonder if it makes a difference. I hope it's <b> because that's what I use. :)

Karen

[Mike12345]

I seem to Find strong better rather the B, i was using b then I changed my mind and I think it helped.

[chris_f]

I use <B>. But that is because I believe in speed speed speed. The less data the quicker the page.

I also don't have line breaks in the code that gets transferred to the server

OTT I know. But hey, If it don't kill you ...

Chris.

[glengara]

Changed all my <B>s to <strong>s one wet weekend, haven't noticed any change though.

[Mike12345]

Glengara, how long ago was this wet weekend. I noticed improvemetn ASAP. I dont think this iprovemetnt was attributed to anyother change as I didnt make any to that page that month.. Just wondering see?

[glengara]

I'd say about 4-5 weeks ago, Mike.

[Quagmire]

I always use <strong> and <em> rather than <b> and <i>, just to make nice with the w3c, standards and tomorrow's browsers :)

[Mike12345]

Thats interesting, because I was just talking to a fellow work buddy and we are in agreeance that strong is better than B. Contrary to that, however, I would say that it doesnt matter on account that some of our other sites still have good listings using B rather than strong, if that makes sense. I might change all of them for experimental purposes.

[BlobFisk]

I now only use <strong>. Other than the fact that it's the standard compliant tag (yes, I know - replacing one letter with 6 is a big mad!), IIRC, <strong> is also interpreted by screen readers (which give the word more emphasis), whereas <b> was not.

[annej]

From this discussion I take it that at the very least it won't hurt to replace <B> and <I> with <strong> and <em>. Maybe I will try it on a few key pages.

Anne

[Muskie]

When I'm writing xhtml I use strong. But for certain projects at work we have to support Netscape 4 and other older browsers, plus the inherrited HTML used bold tags so for that project I stuck with b's.

If you're in a hurry b and i are faster to type. I think you would have to have a rediculous amount of bolding tags for the extra characters to effect bandwidth in a meaningful way. One 40K image has gotta be work about 10,000 strong tags or something rediculous.

Muskie

[lorax]

Until I see proof of this, I don't believe <b> or <strong> will make any difference to your SE ranking. Both are meant for style though it could be argued that whatever appears between the open and close tags of <strong> could be of more importance as far as the page is concerned (strong as in strong emphasis). But it could be argued the other way equally as well.

I am no longer use either as I'm much more inclined to utilize CSS which offers 'font-weight'.

[pageoneresults]

I've been doing some research on this myself. Here is what I've put together so far...

The <b> and <i> tags are for visual markup, meaning that they are purely for visual presentation (what you see with your eyes).

The <strong> and <em> tags are used for emphasis, and are also referred to as phrase elements. The browser renders <strong> the same as <b> and <em> the same as <i>, as mentioned above.

From an accessibility standpoint, <b> and <i> tags are not suggested as aural browsers (browsers that read content aloud) will tonally emphasize words that have these tags. Not so with the <b> and <i> tags.

My question is this, if these tags (either/or) have value in an aural and indexing sort of way, what happens when you move those tags to external css and use the <span> element. How can the browsers (aural included) dechipher what the <span> tag represents? Is there a list of common <span> tags that are used to replace <b>, <strong>, <i>, and <em>?

I'm familiar with the <span> tag and use it all the time in its basic format. For example...

<span class="greend">Content here</span>

Then in my external style sheet...

span.greend{font-weight:bold;color:#690;background:transparent;}

This gives me a bold dark green font. This is referred to as an inline style which is what the <span> tag is for.

So, should we remove those tags and now use style sheets for presentation? Or, are there certain elements that need to remain on the page while the SE's catch up to the latest in html/xhtml/css?

[GilbertZ]

This discussion reminds me how sad this whole html situation is. It should have been so much easier and self-interest really won out over the promise of something so much better...

[andreasfriedrich]

pageoneresults wrote:

what happens when you move those tags to external css and use the <span> element

Why would you want to use the span element which is just a generic mechanism for adding structure to documents when you could use the much more meaningful strong or em elements? Surely not just to style them. This could be done simply by styling those elements in your external style sheets.

Andreas

[indiechild]

<strong> and <em> have semantic meaning to them. So it doesn't matter how you style them, it means that whatever words are wrapped by these tags, you want them to stand out.

So, CSS can't replace the semantic meaning that <strong> and <em> give. CSS is mostly for presentation, and not semantics.

[glengara]

Interesting info, guys.
Exams over already, A?

[andreasfriedrich]

Exams over already, A?

I took the first one (out of nine) yesterday. Posting here is just a way to relax. ;)

Andreas

[victor]

gilbertz:
And which bold? Isn't <b> deprecated in favor of <strong>?

<b> isn't deprecated in any HTML standard -- at least not up to 4.01 strict. Neither is <i>.

It's confusing because <u> and <s> are deprecated. Why? I dunno.

[c3oc3o]

<span class="greend">Content here</span>
...
span.greend{font-weight:bold;color:#690;background:transparent;}

...should be:

<strong class="greend">Content here</strong>
...
strong.greend{color:#690;}

<span> is just for cases where there is no logical tag to attach the class to (as Andreas already implied).

[pageoneresults]

Ah-ha! Never thought to style a <strong> tag. That's a new one for me! Thank you.