The goal of the challenge: come up with a chunk of semantically valuble markup and the CSS that would reproduce the search result represented by the above image. Being a search result, the code had to allow for the possibility of several instances of the object on one page.
Besides my own example, three others stepped up and offered their solutions. Skimming over the code, it seems that there were two camps, those that marked up each result as an item in a list (similar to the new search results on Yahoo! Search) and those that didn't.
I wont be saying anything particular about the results, other than that it is always an educational experience seeing other peoples solutions to problems, especially in the world of web design, where there are always so many options.
With regards to this particular example, it was a bit of a struggle to write up something that was semantically valid while keeping in mind accessibility (hello font-resizing) and all of the other tradeoffs that we designers face everyday.
So, here are the samples:
- Entry #1, by Michael Cheung.
- Entry #2, by Stefan Visser.
- Entry #3, by Jennifer Grucza.
- Entry #4, by yours truly.
Little experiments like these and the excellent SimpleQuiz by Dan Cederholm are great methods for learning to think in new ways. I've learnt from the other examples here, and I hope their authors do as well.
To end this off, I received a last minute mock-up from Lars Schafft, who tested out the use of a definition list for this purpose. He asked me to mention that he did not test in all browsers. Using a definition list here is a great idea, and seems to me like a perfect match. Now if only the specs weren't so vague about definition lists...
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