In the good old days, the div element let us get away with all sorts of structural sloppiness. In fact, the only real reason for using a div wasn’t to create a pseudo-structure (as demonstrated in this article on preparing for HTML5), it was to provide a styling hook. Even the old naming conventions (sidebar &c.) were more suggestive of a page’s appearance than its structure. (Note: header and footer are just as “visual”).
Car design blueprint (from http://www.carbodydesign.com)
This semantic “purity” is perhaps the best thing about HTML5 (although the ability to embed media without resorting to plugins is none–too–shabby as well, as is the shorter, cleaner markup it generates). It also makes it more important than font-face, CSS3 &c. It does mean that constructing pages takes more thought. But that’s a really good thing as it should mean our pages will be easier to navigate and read, and serve our own purposes more as well.
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