Re: Hints on fields

Greetings, you are correct that there is nothing specific defined. Both 
hint and help are defined with their equivalent <message>. 

A hint is defined as being "ephemeral", this means that a user may not 
have to take any explicit action to have the message appear or disappear. 
In a GUI environment such as a PC class browser hints could be implemented 
as tooltips, hover help or whatever work you use to describe such a thing 
and are similar to how the title attribute is handled for html elements 
such as <img title="basket of apples">. In other environments such as 
speech browsers the hint might be given after a delay in responding to a 
prompt.

Help is defined as "modal", this will require explicit user action to get 
rid of the help that they requested. This could appear in a pop-up window 
that needs to be closed when finished with.

Regards, Roland




Robert Bateman <bobbateman@sequoiallc.com> 
Sent by: www-forms-request@w3.org
16/04/2004 17:36

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Subject
Hints on fields







I was looking the the 1.0 spec. for information on how hint and help 
should be 
implemented.  What I was specifically looking to see, was if the spec 
indicates the "life" of the message(s) that are displayed when hint or 
help 
is included in a form.

I didn't notice anything specific.  Did I not see something specific?

Bob Bateman