Extending HTML Semantics

HTML provides a number of other semantic elements, both inline and block, and we’ll look at some of these, including elements for quotations and block quotations, in Chapter 8. But for all the elements HTML has, it still lacks elements that are associated with even the most common page components found in newspapers, magazines, and books. Additionally, a new set of design patterns (navigation bars and so on) made specifically for websites has evolved, but HTML doesn’t have elements for these components either. And since there’s no way to add elements to HTML, we must rely on the small number of elements that the language already offers.

Luckily, HTML does offer an informal but very useful way to extend its semantic capabilities via the class and id attributes.