some detailed comments...

I have some comments/questions on the new guidelines Working Draft:

Numbers are those used in the guidelines:

2.4  There is an example with 
    alt="Image map..."  as the content of an OBJECT element.
  It doesn't make much sense.

wouldn't 
   <A href="#bottom">A text navigation bar is at the bottom</A>

be better?

2.5 Using both title in the A and alt in the IMG confuses me.
  How graghical browsers are supposed to handle that? some
  show alt in a small tooltip widow, and some show title of 
  A in the same way. I think that the specs are silent on this point.
  Isn't it safer just to use the alt in IMG with the text you 
  used for title?

Also the example is not backward compatible. Old browsers will
 show the alt but not the title. The important info is in the title.


4.6 The "meow" example is problematic.  The anchor is empty.
  If it had some text wouldn't the title be unnecessary?

5.1 You mention B I and TT among the presentational markup
  that should not be used. Classified as [required].
  Isn't that a little harsh? These elements are in the strict.dtd
 
you may note that using BIG (or Font size="+1") for emphasize
 is not recommended since text mode browsers like Lynx disregard it 
 altogther. Better is to use EM and STRONG, and possibly
 refining STRONG through style sheets, e.g.:
  <STRONG class="very">Even stronger</STRONG> 
and defing the rule in the ss (for screen and print):

  STRONG.very {font size color whatever....}  

(BIG is also in the strict.dtd ...)

5.3 The title of the HR may be improved. Why 
 saying "Rule introducing" ? does the reader cares that there is a rule 
 there? 
(it remindes me a little bit of Flavell's example "Fancy horizontal Rule"
 used as an alt text for an img)

wouldn't just <HR title="Navigation bar:"> would be better?

 Also there is alt="next.." in the anchors' content in the same example.

5.6 There is an error in example. the > after ABBR and before title should
 not be there.

It seems that you haven't reached a conclusion of how exactly to use
 ABBR and ACRONYM. the guidelines are very quiet about this.

6. in tip and tricks:

As someone who writes for the general public, and beleives in content markup,
I use numbered lists only when the order in vital (e.g. cooking instructions)

Is it possible (I think it is) to make an UL be presented like an OL
through style sheets? I thought may be of something like that:

<UL class="long">
   <LI>
   ...
   <LI>
</UL>

and in the style sheet for non-visual media to put the rule that long lists
 i.e. UL.long will be rendered as OL.

7. I think there aren't any backward compatability tips in the tables section.
 A minimal one would be to put white space between every TD to the next one,
 and to put a line break <BR> in the last cell of each row.

9. You may note that frames are not fully standard, in the sense that 
 the documents that compose the website of frames (not the FRAMESET)
 cannot validate against the strict.dtd but only against the loose.dtd
 since the target attribute in A doesn't exist in the strict.dtd
 (probably because the values of the target attribute in A are 
   not standard.)

Also you have in 11.2 the tip to use the LINK element to refer to a text only
 version. You may include this tip in the Frame section as well. Many 
 authors of frames keep the NOFRAMES section short and send the reader to
 the no frames version. (this enables them to make it accessible
 to graphical browser users who do not want frames.)

  
12. you propose the test "graphical browser with no mouse".
    I didn't quite get it. I use graphical browsers for some time
    and it seems to me impossible to operate all their functions 
    with no mouse. The readme file of my MSIE4 says that a mouse is
    a must.

 Many authors are not going to buy (big bucks) webspeek or anything like that.
 try to emphasize more  online free tests such as those of 
 Delorie.

Marketing tip. Tell people that content markup is good for indexing robots.
It is both true and conviencing.

Validation. I think kinder-gentler is very similar to the W3C validator,
 (same father...). Maybe mention WebTechs that has upload, Mozzila and MSIE
 dtd and typing bits and pieces. Features currently not supported by others.

(I know that HTML 4.0 is better than 
 the Mozilla spec, but Mozilla validation is better than nothing.
 I used to write badly myself, and repenting authors may want to
 validate their old documents without rewriting them altogether).  

In the referrence section. number 3. description is not complete.
 It is a particular article of All things web.

and last tip: 
  in future versions of the guidelines, try to follow them.
  the DOCTYPE declaration should be in the first line.
  also defining background color without defing all other colors 
  is not very best style.

Best regards,

Nir Dagan.

http://www.econ.upf.es/%7Edagan/
dagan@upf.es

Received on Tuesday, 3 February 1998 23:21:25 UTC