H2 instead of H1 in HTML Journal

I have updated the HTML Journal spec to look for h2 tags instead of h1 for an entry title.

When I originally drafted the spec, I was under the impression that HTML5 outline algorithm was still a thing. The outlining algorithm is a neat idea that allows each section of an HTML document to use their own h1-h6 headings without worrying about the section's position in the page. Here's an example from the 2019 version of the HTML spec.

However, MDN warns that:

This functionality has never been implemented; therefore it is important to use your headings to describe the outline of your document.

It turns out that the HTML spec is being re-written too. The same section from the 2019 link I shared above has been updated and doesn't include any reference to the outlining algorithm anymore. The examples now use h2 instead of h1 in sections. The changes come from this pull request that's actually been merged!

So what does it mean, for us writers of HTML Journals?! Let's update our journal and replace:

<h1>My journal</h1>
<article>
  <h1>2022-07-05</h1>
  <p>My entry</p>
</article>

with:

<h1>My journal</h1>
<article>
  <h2>2022-07-05</h2>
  <p>My entry</p>
</article>

I really don't like to change things when they are in flight, but it feels like this change is the right thing to do. Not only are we complying to the latest version of the spec, we also...

Make our journals accessible for screen readers
Display nicely on browsers that don't support HTML5 (e.g. NetSurf)
Don't confuse search engines

As felix mentioned on their journal:

Hopefully a future update will allow the use of level two headings for entries, as is proper.

There we are!

So that we can all take the time to make the change, the kiosk will continue to support entries with an h1 title. I'll leave it to that for as long as needed.

Backlinks:

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