Re: summary="" in HTML5 ISSUE-32

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009, David Poehlman wrote:
>
> could @summary not be taught to display to all?

That would be ideal, but unfortunately, pages on the Web that use 
summary="" almost always use it incorrectly, with horrible values that 
aren't helpful to anyone, and thus we could never get browser vendors to 
actually do this.

Having whatever solution we _do_ use, e.g. <caption>, be visible to all 
users from the beginning, ensures that all users get a better experience 
because bad summary="" text won't be created.

(Authors typically write bad summary="" text for the same reason they 
write bad alt="" text -- they don't understand what they are doing, and 
have no way to test it. Visible text, they _do_ have a way to test.)

Note that in HTML5, <caption> has been redefined to clearly include in its 
scope all the material that in HTML4 was only appropriate in summary="".

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

Received on Thursday, 26 February 2009 10:15:05 UTC