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In short, this is bad web development and UX:

enter image description here

But solving it by using CSS3 word breaking (code & demo) can lead to an 'awkward whitespace' situation, and strange cut-offs — here's an example of both:

enter image description here

Maybe it's not such a big deal, and the UX perspective of it is here, but let's look at the semantics of one of the solutions:

You could ... use the <wbr> element to indicate an optional word break opportunity. This will tell the browser to insert a line break as necessary to flow onto a new line inside the container.

The first question: is using <wbr> semantic HTML? (Does it at least degrade gracefully?)


In either case, it seems that being un-semantic in the general sense is a small price to pay for good UX functionality.

However, the second quesiton is about the big picture:

Are there any schema.org (microdata/RFDa) ramifications to consider when using <wbr> to split up an email address? Will it still be valid there?

Community
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Baumr
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  • Why would someone downvote this question now after it has been answered? (Especially without explaining.) – Baumr Jan 21 '13 at 15:18

1 Answers1

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The wbr element is defined in the HTML5 spec. So it's fine to use it. If it's used right (= according to the definition in the spec), you may call it also "semantic use".

I don't think that there would be any problems in combination with micordata/RDFa. Usually you'd provide the URL in an attribute anyway, which can't contain wbr elements of course: <a href="mailto:foo@example.com">foo<wbr>@example<wbr>.com</a>.

For element content I'd guess (didn't check though) that microdata/RDFa parsers should use the text content without markup resp. understand what is markup and what is text, otherwise e.g. a FOAF name would be <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Foo instead of Dr. Foo.

So you can bet that microdata/RDFa parsers know HTML ;), and therefor it shouldn't be a problem to use its elements.

unor
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  • Agree with everything, but `
    ` is also [not really semantic](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1726073/is-it-sometimes-bad-to-use-br) — so where does that leave ``?     – Baumr Jan 14 '13 at 16:01
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    @Baumr: `br` is perfectly "semantic" *if* it is used right (= according to [its definition](http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-br-element)). It's (exclusively!) for content where line breaks are important for the meaning. Think of poems or addresses. – unor Jan 14 '13 at 19:13