Re: Tagging question...

aloha, charles!

yes, use of the div element in conjunction with the title attribute is a 
far superior method of marking a block of text thank is the horizontal 
rule, as it marks all child blocks as part of that page -- which can be an 
important consideration when one is using web-based material which was 
converted from print, and where knowledge of the print conventions used in 
the original can be extremely important to the end user, something which is 
especially important when web-based content is being used in an academic 
setting...

of course, getting the title from a div is even harder than obtaining it 
from a horizontal rule, even if you are using a user agent that exposes the 
content of the title attribute as a ToolTip OnMouseOver -- especially if 
you are incapable of using (or don't even own) a pointing device...   it 
also doesn't help that those UAs that do support exposition of the title 
attribute do so spottily (expansion of title for ACRONYM but not ABBR in 
MSIE 5.01, for example), and that support for the tooltip method of 
exposing the title attribute changes drastically from release to release 
(i've been told that IE4, for example, exposed titles appended to 
horizontal rules OnMouseOver...

hopefully, uniform (and universal) implementation of the W3C DOM in 
mainstream UAs will fix that, though, for it is from the DOM that a 
DOM-aware adaptive technology could extract such extended semantic 
information, and make it available to the user either on-demand, as a 
default, or not at all, depending upon the users' preference...  and strict 
adherence to the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines will ensure that, if 
the user so desires, such extended semantic information will be available 
to users regardless of modality...

gregory.


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He that lives on Hope, dies farting
      -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
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Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
    WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
         <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
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Received on Thursday, 8 June 2000 23:45:25 UTC