Section elements aren't supposed to have classes, they should have an id attribute which can be used only for margin and padding properties. Row classes and others that are currently applied to section elements should be applied to section child elements, they should be the wrapping elements.

Here's what Richard Clark says in his article on HTML5 Doctor website

http://html5doctor.com/avoiding-common-html5-mistakes/

Frankly, that’s just wrong: section is not a wrapper. The section element denotes a semantic section of your content to help construct a document outline. It should contain a heading. If you’re looking for a page wrapper element (for any flavour of HTML or XHTML), consider applying styles directly to the body element as described by Kroc Camen. If you still need an additional element for styling, use a div. As Dr Mike explains, div isn’t dead, and if there’s nothing else more appropriate, it’s probably where you really want to apply your CSS.

You can see this in action on official Zurb Foundation website.

Comments

danfreeman’s picture

I must correct myself, section elements shouldn't be used for styling at all if we are to follow HTML5 standards.

kevinquillen’s picture

Priority: Normal » Minor

This can change over time when the 5.x base becomes more stable.

nickBumgarner’s picture

We will review this in the near future and see what improvements can be made to the project. Thank you for your input danfreeman.

FiLeVeR10’s picture

I'm not sure this is an issue. Every official documentation I can find seems to negate Richard Clark's opinion and specifies that a section element can contain all global html attributes, and is labeled as a 'flow content' element; categorized the same as div.

W3C
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/sections.html#the-section-element

Mozilla
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/section

HTML5 Living Standard
https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#the-section-element

It is recommended that sections be related content, but doesn't seem to be an actual requirement.

I agree that sections shouldn't be used as styling mechanisms, but that's for the selfish reasoning of backwards browser compatibility for the browsers that do not support it; not because it's technically correct, and that kind of reasoning would hold back the standard.

Are there any official sources stating anything to the contrary that we can use to help @danfreeman's cause?

shauntyndall’s picture

Status: Active » Postponed (maintainer needs more info)
FiLeVeR10’s picture

So does this need to change, or should the Foundation theme follow Foundation's site, examples, and docs?

They use section tags, so I feel like it makes sense for the Foundation theme to follow suit.

What say ye, maintainers?

kevinquillen’s picture

Status: Postponed (maintainer needs more info) » Closed (works as designed)

If Foundation decides to change, then it will change. No point redoing all of this for 5.x.