what is the difference between <strong> tag and <b> tag

Hi all

I sometimes use strong tags and sometimes use bold tags to bold the text.
But never know what is the diffence beetween each one. lol , even my friends dont know the difference lol

just for coriosity can some1 pls. explaim the difference beetween each one

thanks

oh and happy new year

 

They have the same effect on normal web browser rendering engines, but there is a fundamental difference.
Think of three different situations:

* web browsers
* blind people
* mobile phones

"Bold" is a style - when you say "bold a word", people basically know that it means to add more, let's say "ink" around the letters until they stand out more amongst the rest of the letters.

That, unfortunately, means nothing to a blind person. And on mobile phones and other PDA's, text is already bold because screen resolution is very small. You can't bold a bold without screwing something up.

<b> is a style - we know what "bold" is supposed to look like.

<strong> however is an indication of what something should look it.

 

The difference come from it´s own propieties:
<strong></strong> is a call to make text stand out in general.
<b></b> is just a simple way to put the font in bold.
I personal preffer strong tags in coding.

 

well, one's stronger than the other!

 

For view there really isn't that much difference, <b> makes the text bold to look at but does nothing else. <strong> makes the text bold to look at but also tells browsers and text readers that this word or group of words is meant to have strong emphasis. For instance if you were using a text reader it would put strong emphasis on the <strong> words by reading them a little louder, but read the <b> words the same as the rest.

It's the same with <em> and <i>, they both do the same thing visually (make italics) but only <em> tells browsers to give the word physical emphasis... so <em> = emphasis and <strong> = strong emphasis, where <i> = make the text italics and <b> = make the text bold.

It may be worth thinking about if you want your websites to be compliant with user ability etc, i.e giving as much the same experiance for blind and partially sighted people by using <strong> and <em>, but bear in mind if you use them too much you'll be making text readers shout out whole swathes of text which can be very annoying, like a TV commercial.

 

thank you for explanign in very neat way
rep added

 

Many thanks for the explanation - something I've always wanted to know but never bothered asking.