Ah yes, web standards zealots. These are the guys who run blogs debating the use of <b> vs <strong> on a monthly basis. The funny thing is that I jumped on the CSS bandwagon early (Netscape 4 era) because of the obvious benefits. Now I find myself disgusted at what the community has become.
They live in their inbred web standards blog world where they have a very polished view of what is "semantic" and what it means to separate content and presentation. All the while completely oblivious to the ecosystem in which web standards live and the constant tradeoffs that must be made in any software system.
Ignoring what should be obvious: there's precious little semantic information in an HTML document. The standardized tags are all but completely presentational. Naming CSS classes strictly according to some pedantic definition of "semantic" meaning "not presentational" is deluded. First, because we add classes to things because need a hook for presentational purposes. Second, because 99% of the time, the actual goals of writing HTML/CSS are presentation, concision, maintainability, and maybe SEO. It turns out you should name your classes descriptively, which may align with a semanticist's notion of best practice 80% of the time. But then the remaining 20% of the time they'll rip you new one for use class="red" instead of using a half-dozen "semantically pure" names like class="slightly_more_important_block", class="second_heading_in_a_row", class="something_i_just_want_to_be_different", class="sometimes_i_just_want_to_be_different", class="why_web_design_sucks_in_96" and class="i_love_you_man"
They live in their inbred web standards blog world where they have a very polished view of what is "semantic" and what it means to separate content and presentation. All the while completely oblivious to the ecosystem in which web standards live and the constant tradeoffs that must be made in any software system.
Ignoring what should be obvious: there's precious little semantic information in an HTML document. The standardized tags are all but completely presentational. Naming CSS classes strictly according to some pedantic definition of "semantic" meaning "not presentational" is deluded. First, because we add classes to things because need a hook for presentational purposes. Second, because 99% of the time, the actual goals of writing HTML/CSS are presentation, concision, maintainability, and maybe SEO. It turns out you should name your classes descriptively, which may align with a semanticist's notion of best practice 80% of the time. But then the remaining 20% of the time they'll rip you new one for use class="red" instead of using a half-dozen "semantically pure" names like class="slightly_more_important_block", class="second_heading_in_a_row", class="something_i_just_want_to_be_different", class="sometimes_i_just_want_to_be_different", class="why_web_design_sucks_in_96" and class="i_love_you_man"