Re: Landmarks on web pages

I think we want to write the guidelines so they are easy to understand by
developers.  Could browser developers respond to Scotts thoughts on the
format of the guidelines?
Jon



At 11:54 AM 3/7/98 -0800, Scott Luebking wrote:
>Hi,
>I have a suggestion which might be helpful for writing the guidelines.
>It is often useful to write guidelines not so much from the perspective of
>the writer but from the perspective of the reader.  This approach can often
>make it easier for the reader to understand.  Since we want browser
>companies to understand the guidelines and agree to implement them, we need
>to think about how the browser company's might look at things.
>Also, the easier it looks to do, the more likely browser developers
>will do the needed work.
>
>My suspicion is that many of the browsers are written using object-oriented
>technology.  The object-oriented technology has many advantages, but one
>challenge is that good object-oriented programmers need to think
>fairly abstractly about the issues, much more abstractly than programmers
>writing in C, etc.
>
>The guidelines reference things like headers, links, forms.  One suggestion
>is to come up with an abstract class name for them.  The term 'elements'
could
>be used, but I think a term which somehow conveys the navigation aspect might
>be very helpful.  (Many elements in HTML are not related to navigation.)
>My suggestion is the term 'landmark elements' or just 'landmarks' for
short.  
>(Actually, it might be useful to drop the 'elements' part in case there
>might be navigation points which don't exactly correspond to HTML elements.)
>
>If the abtract class is "landmarks", then various sub-classes can be:
>
>    links
>    headers
>    paragraphs
>    begin form
>    end form
>    input fields
>    begin list
>    end list
>    list item
>    begin table
>    end table
>    table cell
>
>The various types of landmarks actually have similarities in navigation.
>
>Explicit navigation
>
>    e.g.  go to link numbered 5
>
>Sequence navigation
>
>    e.g.  go to next/previous header
>
>Navigation via list of landarks
>
>    e.g.  go to zip code field in form
>
>
>A few of the landmarks have actions associated with them.  The landmark
>class structure could look like:
>
>    landmarks
>
>        headers
>        paragraphs
>        begin form
>        end form
>        begin list
>        end list
>        list item
>        begin table
>        end table
>	table cell
>
>	action landmarks
>
>            links
>	    input fields
>
>The action landmarks could be triggered by explicit specification
>or by having the landmark highlighted in some way.
>
>Does this class structure make sense?
>
>Scott
>
>
Jon Gunderson, Ph.D., ATP
Coordinator of Assistive Communication and Information Technology
Division of Rehabilitation - Education Services
University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
1207 S. Oak Street
Champaign, IL 61820

Voice: 217-244-5870
Fax: 217-333-0248
E-mail: jongund@uiuc.edu
WWW:	http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~jongund
	http://www.als.uiuc.edu/InfoTechAccess

Received on Monday, 9 March 1998 10:43:10 UTC