RE: Suggestions on Team A homework

Hi Gez and team A,

Re Failure due to opening a new window as soon as a new page is loaded.
I think the way to go about resolving this is to determine first if user
trigger of opening multiple windows is allowed.  I think all of us would
agree that a user triggered of opening multiple windows actually passes
3.2.5 when such event is expected.  Keyword here is expected.  Of
course, you may dispute that.  Let's say we agree on the first question.
Next logical question is--in the case of 1) User initiated change of
context that leads to 2) opening windows #1, 3) opening windows #2, 4)
opening windows #3, would the event that take place between event 2 & 3
and 3 & 4 constitute a change of context not trigger by the user when
the overall event (event 2 to 4) are all collectively triggered by event
1.  The difference is expectation and macro vs micro change of content.


Perhaps another way to tackle this is to determine if the entire
sequence of events can be considered a change of context.  If the user
trigger an event and that the following series of events are related to
the execution of the initial user decision, the meaning of the content
regardless of the number of windows opened does not really change.  I
think this may be a reasonable path to take if you want to avoid the
pop-up ads passing 3.2.1 while keeping a way for people to perform
serious business processes over the web. 

A concrete example is (You may skip to next paragraph if you don't need
a business example.) a supermarket manager triggers an order for 100
cases of beer.  The system checks to see if a previous order is
scheduled to arrive within the time requirements.  If not, check if
warehouse has inventory.  If not, find and select a vendor that can
deliver within the time and pricing parameters.  Then it handles the
financial processes to pay for the beer, block the time in loading dock,
allocate staffing to unload and stock, and adjust the inventory
projection.  All of these tasks may involve multiple user agents
accessing multiple systems inside and outside of the company.  Regular
Joe would never see anything with this level of complexity.  But most
governments and businesses do millions of transactions like this
everyday.  I actually simplified this example by a large degree.
Pop-ups are unavoidable and expected when multiple systems are linked
together using the web.  

Not all pop-ups are bad.

Re Meta refresh-The definition of change of context requires a change of
meaning.  A page refresh does not always change the meaning of the
content.  That is why meta refresh in and of itself does not necessarily
meet the level of failure by change of context.

All best,
Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: Gez Lemon [mailto:gez.lemon@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 10:58 AM
To: Li, Alex
Cc: public-wcag-teama@w3.org
Subject: Re: Suggestions on Team A homework

Hi Alex,

On 31/01/06, Li, Alex <alex.li@sap.com> wrote:
> 3.2.1 Common Failures-Failure due to opening a new window as soon as a
new
> page is loaded.
> Does this somehow suggest that techniques that are supposed to open
multiple
> windows would fail L1 if they open these windows sequentially?  I
don't
> think the failure should be triggered by page load.

Personally, I think that's a failure.

> Failure due to opening a pop-up when a user enters text into an input
field
> - Please leave room for DOS or UNIX command prompt type
functionalities.  In
> other words, the return or enter key may trigger a change of context
at
> least under some circumstances for good reasons.

When a user presses return or enter in a text input box (not
textarea), the expected behaviour would be to submit the form.
Pressing return or enter shouldn't be considered as entering text, so
should allow for your DOS or UNIX style behaviour.

> Failure due to using meta refresh - We should either specify that such
> update don't always constitute a change of context because only part
of the
> content is refreshed (stock price, wind speed, for example) or, better
yet,
> have a separate page to help people understand what constitute as
change of
> context.

Meta refresh refreshes the whole page, not part of it.

Best regards,

--
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Received on Tuesday, 31 January 2006 21:50:50 UTC