Re: Mailing list archives: feeback requested on proposed improvements (1: list)

le mer 27-03-2002 à 13:58, Steven Pemberton a écrit :
> Comments (part 1) on:
> http://www.w3.org/2002/03/archives-improvements/ml-index
> 
> The page I experimented with is at
> http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/w3c/lists/ml-index.html
> (It still needs work)
> ====
> I realise that the [Shortcut] link is for accessibility reasons, but it
> confused me for a while. It is really not useful for the sighted reader, and
> will confuse a lot of people, I am sure.
> 
> Is there no way we can hide it in the markup, so that accessible user agents
> see it, and no one else has to be confronted with it?
> 
> Does an empty <a> with a title work? <a href="#latest" accesskey="j"
> title="Latest message"></a>.

I don't know if an empty <a> would work... Al?

Ian has made a suggestion to have a navigation bar in the index page
too, and instead of the "shortcut" title, it would be something like
"Latest message" which would propably make more sense? Otherwise, we
could still hide it with a CSS rule.

> ====
> I'm a big believer in maximising the content and minimising the wasted
> space. How about moving the icon into the <h1> (and making the h1
> class="head")? The icon positioning would need to be adjusted, but it gives
> at least three more lines of real content.

Well, an icon inside a <h1> is defined as follow according to our house
style guide (http://www.w3.org/Project/HouseStyle.html team only): 
[[
For the home page of an area or subarea, Inside and at the start of the
H1, put a large image connected wit the icon or else the icon itself.
This is the defining occurence of the icon.
]]

I would rather add a CSS rule to make the icon float on the left.

Anyway, very good suggestion regarding minimizing the wasted space.

> ====
> Visually I don't think the <hr/> is needed at the top. The search box and
> the following headings already break it up visually.

Indeed, I'll remove it.

> ====
> Visually I feel the table needs to be indented a little

Do you mean there should be more space on the left?

> ====
> I think "re-sorted" should just be "sorted"

The re-sorted title has been suggested as being clearer for accessible
reasons.

> ====
> Move the "by" into the header, so it reads "sorted by", and then the columns
> are just thread, author, and subject.

Same as above.

> ====
> Move the <em> from the <th>s into the stylesheet.

Good point.

> ====
> The 'title's of the links are inconsistent. I would make them "March 2002 by
> date", "March 2002 by thread", "March 2002 by author", "March 2002 by
> subject".

The current titles have been suggested by Al. Al, what do you think? I
think having the word "messages" is clearer for those that have it read
by their browser.

> ====
> There are empty rows between the December and the January rows of the
> tables. Apparently this is to signal a change of year, but visually this is
> very subtle, and I'm guessing it's not that useful from an accessibility
> point of view either. How about having a <tbody> for each year with a
> suitable title:
> 
>     <tbody title="2002">...
>     </tbody>
>     <tbody title="2001">...
>     </tbody>
> 
> this handles the accessibility. Now the visual. Hmm neither Opera nor
> Netscape 6 seem to do margins or borders on <tbody>. That still needs work.

I hadn't noticed the empty row, and I like your suggestion of 2 tbody.
Regarding visual appearance, I hope this can be handled through CSS.

> ====
> There should be no <br/> after the <address> tag at the bottom.

Good point, will fix.

> ====
> I'm not sure of the value of the extra help link at the bottom (it is
> already at the top). I'm guessing that it would be more useful if the
> accesskey was on the top link, not the bottom one. Is there a reason that
> the accesskey for help is a capital H, and all the other ones lower-case?

Regarding the help link at the bottom, it's not the same as the one at
the top (one is for the mail search engine, the other is for the
archives). It might be moved on the top if we follow Ian's suggestions
(sorry, these are not yet on wai-xtech, I hope they'll be soon).

Thanks a lot for your very careful reading and your very good comments!

[I'll follow up on the other parts on the corresponding messages]

Dom
-- 
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/
W3C's Webmaster
mailto:dom@w3.org

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 08:16:37 UTC