<strong> or <bold>

What do you use?

Does it matter? Is there a difference?

Do any browsers care?

I don't know that browsers currently care.

I tend to use strong rather than bold, but currently, it's largely (not completely, but largely) a matter of preference of approach. Semantic markup versus presentational.

I don't know how other devices would render them (for example, screen readers or Braille browsers), but I'd be interested to find out the differences.

For accessibility you should use the <strong> tag because this is what speech browsers and such look for.

The <b> tag is now deprecated so it would be best to get used to using the <strong> tag, though both will work for the time being.

See: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html
The presentation of phrase elements depends on the user agent. Generally, visual user agents present EM text in italics and STRONG text in bold font. Speech synthesizer user agents may change the synthesis parameters, such as volume, pitch and rate accordingly.

Actually <b> has not been deprecated. It is still listed in the XHTML1.1 DTD and that is a strict DTD which doesn't contains any deprecated elements or tags.

i usually use css instead of it, but when it comes to tags i use <b> but it is outdated so i think i should switch to <strong> someday...

Both elements are in the HTML 2.0 DTD so neither is more outdated than the other, and neither is deprecated.

xhtml 2.0 doesn't mention <b> at all. only <strong>. so it is deprecated. http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xhtml2-20030506/mod-inline-text.html#s_inline-textmodule_issue_3

edit: nether does xhtml 1.0 basic: http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xhtml-basic-20001219/

<b> works, shorter, and time efficient if you have a lot of code to type **curses HTML editors**

Nothing like good old notepad ey? :)

Originally posted by 4 Degrees
**curses HTML editors**
amen to that :)
everyone should write code manually with notepad-compatible editors or not write html at all.

Originally posted by CyberAlien
xhtml 2.0 doesn't mention <b> at all. only <strong>. so it is deprecated. http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xhtml2-20030506/mod-inline-text.html#s_inline-textmodule_issue_3

edit: nether does xhtml 1.0 basic: http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xhtml-basic-20001219/

XHTML is still a working draft so don't rely on ANYTHING contained within it and no user-agents are yet designed to use it.

XHTML 1.1 defined <b> and so does XHTML 1.0 strict

From the XHTML 1.0 strict DTD

<!--=================== Text Elements ====================================-->

<!ENTITY % special.pre
"br | span | bdo | map">


<!ENTITY % special
"%special.pre; | object | img ">

<!ENTITY % fontstyle "tt | i | b | big | small ">

<!ENTITY % phrase "em | strong | dfn | code | q |
samp | kbd | var | cite | abbr | acronym | sub | sup ">


There is no DTD for XHTML 2.0 yet
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/xhtml20_dtd.html#a_xhtml20_dtd_issue_0

You can see that XHTML 2.0 is still far from complete when you read the entry for the <strong> tag


strong

Leave in, deprecate or remove? No consensus.

i tend to use strong because of the non visual browsers. usually I don't like exactly what it does, tho so i'll put a class= or style= in there and override whatever visual effect it has anyway. If it's my personal stuff all my text formatting is done with span. then again b is short and makes more sense to me (remember i... i and b...)

And amen to the notepad remark. Except you all should use textpad. Most html these days is snippets inside scripts, isn't it?

It's been a long time since I've used either <b> or <i>. They're semantically meaningless, presentational rubbish which doesn't belong in XHTML, deprecated or not.

Both <strong> and <em> can be styled with CSS if you don't like the default looks (personally I always make certain in my CSS that <strong> is font-weight:bold, and <em> is font-style:italic - yes the default, but always best to make certain every single browser is seeing what you mean them to see) and they actually hold some structural value.

It's the same argument (IMO) as the one about whether it's better to write <p><font size="+2"><b>My Title</b></font></p> or just simply <h1>My Title</h1>.

No brainer right? One holds semantic meaning, the other certainly doesn't. <b> and <strong> fall neatly into those camps too.

Originally posted by CyberAlien
amen to that :)
everyone should write code manually with notepad-compatible editors or not write html at all.

Why is that?

Originally posted by Mekhu
Why is that?
Because html editors create complete mess (except for dreamweaver that seems to be the only decent editor) instead of html code. And sometimes that mess is so big that page can be viewed only with IE (mostly created with frontpage).