h1 and document title issues (update)

A post about the h (h1, h2, h3, h3, h5, h6) heading tags of html and it’s uses for document headings, especially within wordpress themes. This post is completely China unrelated, but at this moment I have no other place to put it and I really want to write this down for reference. Comments are welcome.

WordPress has changed the playing field of web pages. With wordpress a dream has come true. Easy to install, full of features, SEO friendly and a meanignfull heading structure.

Wait…. have you checked the html code that your wordpress theme produces? This selfwritten wp theme does something that 99% of all currently available wp themes do. The h1-tag is used for the name of the blog, in my case that’s “Junjie’s China blog”. That makes sense to some degree if you are on the front page and look at a list of articles. It makes no sense at all if you open a certain article, like this one you are reading right now.

If you printed out this article about heading markup in html, would you say that the title is “Junjie’s China blog” or would you say, that the title is “h1 and document title issues”. I think we can all agree that the latter is correct. If this is true, then “Junjie’s China blog” should not be enclosed in h1-tags, instead the title or topic of this document should be honored with h1-tags.

But what to do with the name of the blog? Will it at least get an h2? The W3C has some answers: Using h1-h6 to identify headings. Ah well, then everything is nice, isn’t it? I don’t think so. The W3C is beating around the bush with their recommendation. h-tags are clearly meant to give documents a structure. While giving a h2 to the blog name doesn’t seem that bad, there are other parts where the recommendation fails miserably. Html headings are meant to give structure to a document in a semantic sense. Giving that h2 to “Junjie’s China blog” is acceptable, because this is not anyones take on the topic, it’s Junjie’s view on this topic. Giving h2 to the navigation however doesn’t make sense at all. h1 should be the main title of a document, while h2 shall be used for all the important main points. “Navigation” and “Archives” are not main points within most documents, in fact they are only “boilerplate” content. Therefore it would be a nightmare to the idea of a semantic web to enclose them in h2-tags. Clearly, the html standard is lacking some tags.

WAI ARIA has been recommended by some people, but I feel that is more of a workaround than a real solution. Especially because there is a lot of extra work involved when using WAI ARIA.

The reader of a website doesn’t see if a heading uses h1 or h2 or h3. All he cares is that the important things are bigger and the other stuf is smaller. Naturally heading-tags express this relation and that is fine. Search engines like google on the other hand heavily depend on these tags to structure the information on a page and if the heading structure is fine for google, then I will receive more hits from it. Furthermore, I really want to support the idea of a semantic web, because I think that’s the way the internet should be.

What can we do?
I’m currently writing my own blank-theme for wordpress and I want to get this right. There are a number of blank themes out there, all open source, but most if not all of them do not adress the heading issue properly (besides some other issues). This is one of the major reasons why I want to create my own blank-theme. I’ve been reading material concerning this issue all afternoon and so far haven’t found a nice solution. But I do want to build something, that is at least acceptable.

Here is what I want to do:

• the visual sizes of headings should lead the reader of the website
• meanignful html heading structure, meaningful in the semantic sense

There is a chance I might just end up doing it like everyone else does it, but at least I want to take a moment and think this through.

Any advice welcome. If you have stumbled onto this previously, please let me know what you have done about it.

Update:
John Chow does it pretty much the way I want it for myself. Have a look into his html code of the blog overview and then of a single post. Very nice.

However when I create a theme and pass it on to other people, they probably expect it to be the same like all the other themes. So for other people I will do the usual h1-tag for blog name style. Unless they tell me they want something better

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Bored at work? Check out this!

click nyan.cat
You can adjust sound level in the top left corner.

don’t forget to come back and post your score

MKL has lol cats, but Junjie is still Nyaning with the Nyan Cat

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To handwrite or not to handwrite

It seems like it takes forever to learn to handwrite Chinese characters. Currently I’m in Europe, so handwriting and reading is my focus. However I’m asking myself, is it worth it?

For the HSK test

The HSK test requires knowledge in handwriting Chinese characters. This is especially true for the higher levels of this test, namely HSK 5 and 6. I have to find out how much handwriting in need to pass this test. I’m sure handwriting will NOT be my strong point here, but I do need to pass the handwriting section. Yes I do want to do the HSK test at somepoint in the future. People like certificates

Who is handwriting anyway?

Most text is written on the computer today. So why even bother with handwriting Chinese characters. And if I’m somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and I need to take some notes with a pen and paper, I can still do it in English. I’m not a journalist, who needs to write down word-by-word notes.

It feels so incompete

This is the worst part I guess. I was asked if I can understand English a few times in my life. I answered yes. Yes meaning I can listen, speak, read and write it. What would my answer be for Chinese in 2 or 3 years from now? Yes, but I can’t write. That sounds like I picked up the language somewhere on the street, but never got any formal lessons in it. So strange. Also, there is some part inside me that says, that I should be able to write.

It takes up so much time

It takes to much time to lern to handwrite. Soooooo much.

I think we have talked about the ability to handwrite in Chinese before. But I haven’t found a final answer for myself, this topic is still going around in my head.

• Should I learn to handwrite Chinese characters?
• If yes, how many characters should I learn?

Please advise.

Posted in Learn Chinese | 8 Comments »

Wuhan is going to build giant super dildo

This post is safe for work, at least there is only a picture of a new supertall skyscraper included here, no nude girls or anything like that. So don’t think anything wrong, when looking at this concept drawing of a new office tower proposed to be built in Wuhan, China. Let’s have a look at this gigant, super, elongated, milehigh building first:

Wuhan really wants to stand out. Image credit: home.news.cn

Now that we have talked about the juicy part, let’s get to the rock solid facts:
Wuhan is going to replace old buildings in a huge area in the inner city with modern glass towers. There is a plan for the development of the whole area, several blocks wide. In the first phase, which is currently being built, only medium high buildings are constructed. The 606 meter high super dildo has to wait until the end of this multi-phase construction. Currently it’s name is Greenland Center, but I guess this is only a placeholder name. While there is already construction work going on for the first buildings in this area, the dildo won’t be started before 2015 and that means plans might change over time. However I would advise Wuhan to stick to this supertall skyscraper to show their ecenomic potency.

If you want to know more, check the related thread on skyscrapercity: WUHAN | Greenland Center | 606m | 1988ft | Prep

Posted in China in General | 4 Comments »

When reality strikes

My life has been pretty much upside down. I guess that’s life. I’m currently sorting out things and I don’t want to write to much about this here. Despite previously announcing otherwise, I’m still not in China and I do not know when I will have an opportunity to go there. I’m working towards it. I’m still learning Chinese, but I might not be able to set foot on Chinese soil in 2011. Until then, I’ll write a few posts here. The upcoming posts might not be very personal, only my personal, subjective and selective opinion about world news losely related to China and maybe some words about my learning progress.

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Learn Chinese with Peggy

Bored with your Chinese textbook? I can feel with you. Reading text means struggle. It’s better to just sit there an listen. If you feel the same, I want to recommend you a youtube channel with lot’s of lessens for beginners and lower intermdiate Chinese learners. Check out Peggy Teaches Chinese.

Peggy is from Taiwan and has created this wonderful channel with numerous lessons. Beginning with saying “Hello” until intermediate topics, like how to get a room on a hotel. I really like the lessons, because their quality is quite high and can be easily be understood (no nasty background noise). Also the videos are quite fun, because Peggy has a lot of energy and the videos are recorded at authentic places. The hotel lesson seems to be recorded in a real hotel, at least some part of it. Furthermore, all important information is displayed in the video subtitles.

Peggy talks pretty standard, but she does have a slight Taiwan accent. A few words are Taiwan specific, but these are so few it doesn’t really matter. And for some people a Chinese lesson straight from Taiwan might just be perfect. There is also a PeggyTeachesChinese Website. There is a little additional content on the website and if you like Peggy’s Chinese tutoring videos you might think about booking her as a teacher. Just check her website. Finally I want to mention, Peggy has really good looks. Even if you don’t want to learn Chinese, you still might be interested.

If you want to learn some Chinese right now, no matter your current Chinese level, head to Peggy Teaches Chinese on youtube right now and select a suitable video lesson.

Posted in Learn Chinese | 12 Comments »

Happy New Year 2011

Another year passed by. Today is the first day in 2011. In 2010 I finally got my Bachelor degree and I am so relieved that I made it. I remember the day when I met my fellow students for the first time. The head professor gave a speech. He told us not everyone would make it. I want to use this moment and brag about that I did make it. Yay!

Apart from that, I also improved my Chinese. Not as much as I planned, but setting goals to high is a common problem for me or maybe I just should work harder. At the beginning of 2010 I could recognize about 500 汉字, I planned to know 2000 汉字 by the end of 2010. I didn’t count exactly, but from what material I can read now my character count should be somewhere near 1200 汉字. On the other hand I can now write about 200 汉字, while I didn’t plan to learn writing at all. At least they are in my short term memory, I need to bring them into my long term memory next.

Obviously I will continue to learn Chinese, but I’m not exactly sure yet what and how much I want to learn in 2011. In the coming weeks I’ll post my 2011 goals in learning the Chinese language. Being in China would really help my situation, maybe I can move there soon.

I wish all my readers a Happy New Year 2011 and may all your wishes come true.

Junjie is greeting the world from his current home in the snowy mountain forrests of central Europe.

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Skype is illegal in China soon

Based on this article by Shanghai Daily. It references some Xinhua article, but there is no link and I couldn’t find that Xinhua article.

To sum it up, the Chinese government has decided that VoIP (Voice over IP) applications are illegal. The only exception is, when these services are provided by China Telecom and China Uniom. There is no timetable when these new rules come into effect. Skype and other VoIP services like UUCall maybe have to close their China branches soon.

This reminds me of another law. People who do not have a Chinese passport are not allowed to have a GPS device while on Chinese soil. Only Chinese nationals can use GPS devices in China legally. For foreigners in China GPS is a no-go. Foreigners who intend to use mobile phones with GPS built in must register before bringing the device into China.

But we shouldn’t be unhappy. China Telecom and China Uniom will happily provide us with VoIP services. I’m certain they will also make sure our VoIP messages will be correct politically…. ehrm… I mean grammatically. Skype doesn’t support such functionality, yet.

China Telecom – 中国电信
China Unicom – 中国联通

Update 2011-01-09:
Seems like there was some misunderstanding. Some Chinese government spokesman said, that they will only crackdown on illegal VoIP business. The question when a VoIP business is illegal and when it’s not he didn’t answer.

Posted in China in General | 4 Comments »