- From: Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@myrealbox.com>
- Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:08:26 +1300
On Oct 30, 2007, at 6:01 PM, Ian Hickson wrote: > ... > On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Matthew Thomas wrote: >> >> Or perhaps <a ... rel="help" for="phone-number">, to be consistent >> with the for= attribute in <label>. > > This is a possibility, but is it really needed? In general it seems > we'd want to encourage authors to put the links near the text and > controls to which it applies. Sure, but I don't see how it's different from <label> in that respect: we want to encourage authors to put <label> near the control to which it applies, but <label> already has for=. (<label> can have weak semantic value even when not related to a particular control, but then so could rel="help".) >> Many applications provide inline help which is not a label, and the >> same attributes would be appropriate here: <div rel="help" >> for="phone-number"><p>The full number, including country code.</p> >> <p>Example: <samp>+61 3 1234 5678</samp></p></div> > > How would UAs use this? UAs likely wouldn't, but scripts could. For example, a form might include sparing help by default, with a style sheet hiding more exhaustive help (as indicated by rel="help"). Then a script could add a small help button after each control that has associated help (i.e. each control with name="x" where there exists an element on the page with rel="help" for="x"). When a control's help button was clicked, the control's help would be shown. Another possible presentation would be reserving whitespace to the right of the form, and making <whatever rel="help" for="x"> visible in that space whenever <input name="x"> was focused. <http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000191.php> shows these and other examples of dynamic help. >> The cite= attribute was also mentioned in this thread as one that is >> practically useless because there is no good way of presenting it. >> (Sometimes authors use JavaScript to pull it out of a <blockquote> and >> present it as a link underneath. But that still has accessibility >> problems, because it doesn't work without JavaScript, and the >> resulting link text is either a raw URL or the same text for every >> quote. These problems make the technique even more unworkable for >> <q>.) As a result, authors usually use an <a> link to the resource >> they're quoting (look at most self-hosted Weblogs for examples), and >> there ends up being no machine-readable connection between the link >> and the quote. This could similarly be achieved in the <a> element >> with a for= attribute giving the ID of the <blockquote> or <q> >> element. > > Interesting idea. > >> The majority of authors still wouldn't use these attributes, because >> it would give them no presentational benefit. But at least authors >> would be slightly more likely to use them than to use attributes that >> they have to re-present using extra elements or JavaScript. > > We should probably aim higher than that though... > ... I'm suggesting either replacing <foo cite="url"></foo> with <bar rel="citation" for="id-of-foo">, or dropping cite= altogether. Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/
Received on Sunday, 11 November 2007 14:08:26 UTC