section or aside?

[gany]

Hi, I (roughly) know what the new aside and section tags are supposed to do, but I'm not certain which one to use: I'm working on a 3 column layout for a Joomla site. The left column will contain the sub navigation and some images. The center column is for the main content and the right column for images and banner ads. The left column I would make a section, the center column article and the right column aside. Is this the correct way to do it, or should I name the left and right columns both sections? Thanks, Gany

[Krewe]

This is an HTML 5 question not CSS...Section: The <section> tag defines sections in a document. Such as chapters, headers, footers, or any other sections of the document.Aside: The <aside> tag defines some content aside from the content it is placed in. The aside content should be related to the surrounding content. More Info on Section tagMore Info on Aside tag I'd use neither Section or Aside for the columns. I'd use Div tags.However, you could use section tags to separate multiple articles in the center div (assuming multiple articles will be showing at a time). However, I'd probably still say stick with div tags, unless someone has a reason why? ~krewe

Edited August 10, 2012 by Krewe

[Don E]

Elements(tags) like <header>, <footer>, <section>, <aside>, etc are known as Semantic Elements. From my understanding they are to help with certain browsers, like screen readers etc for disable people for example in describing the content/page to the user(s). I still use divs mostly for everything as well since HTML5 elements are not fully supported in most/all browsers yet.