Re: Revised OPTGROUP proposal (fwd)

MegaZone (megazone@livingston.com)
Thu, 25 Sep 1997 20:44:30 -0700 (PDT) 

Message-Id: <199709260344.UAA11720@server.livingston.com>
To: www-html@w3.org
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 20:44:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: MegaZone <megazone@livingston.com>
Subject: Re: Revised OPTGROUP proposal (fwd)

Once upon a time David Perrell shaped the electrons to say...
>OK, I thought NEST was sorta bird-brained, but OPTGROUP looks pretty clever to
>me. Sure beats FRAMEs. It would be nice to have this kind of menuing capabilit
>without scripting or ActiveX.

NEST was an obvious move - an element that groups things.  But I was never
really comfortable with it.  The big thing that bugged me was having things
appear multiple times in older browsers.  I just wasn't thinking laterally
enough.

When I read the HTML 4.0 spec and saw 'axes' and 'axis' I started thinking
about it again.  I really think this new proposal is more robust and 
provides a better system for non-traditional UAs.  Someone using an aural
browser doesn't need to listen to a long list, they can listen to the
section headers and only pick the ones they need.  Same for things like
PDAs or web-enabled cell phones (don't laugh - I've seen them), etc, with
small screens.  The big 2 might not bother, and it might be a headache for
Lynx (though I have seen pop-ups done in curses mode - our terminal
interface on our HW config tool does it), but then they probably won't
bother with them on TABLE either.

Though it is a dream to get that effect in a graphical browser.

Actually, knowing how cool the Lynx folks have been to date, it wouldn't
surprise me to see Lynx with it before either of the big 2. :-)

>"Disabled"? Tsk tsk. I think the correct terminology is "functionally dormant

Hey, just using their terms. :-)

>You may be high.

I wish - I wouldn't be as stressed.

-MZ
--
Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs
Phone: 800-458-9966 510-737-2100 FAX: 510-737-2110 megazone@livingston.com
For support requests: support@livingston.com  <http://www.livingston.com/> 
Snail mail: 4464 Willow Road, Pleasanton, CA 94588