Re: Comments on IRC log

On Thu, 2 Aug 2007, Joshue O Connor wrote:
> 
> Personally, I guess I was on the back foot because it seemed to me that 
> certain (what I perceive as good) accessibility features of HTML were 
> for want of a better word - threatened. However in truth I have to 
> consider that many of them may not be ideal implementations in the first 
> place and could be improved. I feel conflicted about this however, as to 
> some degree a working feature in the hand is worth two in the bush but 
> as Chaals pointed out (cannot find the ref just now) in some ways we 
> have a tabula rasa (in principle) where with the proper approach we can 
> fix non-ideal implementations in the spec, as I guess we are older and 
> wiser and can look back at how successful HTML 4 has been.
> 
> Having said that (and this is my own Pavlovian response) please continue 
> to support (if not recommend) useful features (you know the list)  and 
> let them sit alongside the shiny new improved aspects of the spec. :-)

In most cases, I agree with you. Sometimes, though, it may be that a 
feature is so poorly used or implemented in practice that implementations 
are actually better off not supporting it. This is the case, for example, 
for the HTTP Content-Location header -- it is so badly abused in the wild 
that implementations can get significantly better results by simply not 
supporting it. This is why the research aspect of problem solving is 
important -- it may be that certain features that are implemented are in 
fact so badly used, or used in so trivial ways, that other strategies can 
get similar effects more reliably. This is all hypothetical, though. I 
haven't yet looked at the table accessibility problems in question (and 
probably won't until they are described on the wiki in terms of problems 
rather than solutions, since I have such a large backlog of other things 
to deal wth first).

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 2 August 2007 19:35:28 UTC