Client-side Scripting Techniques for WCAG 2.0 - some comments

Dear all,

The Client-side Scripting Techniques for WCAG 2.0 document [1] states:
"The Working Group welcomes comments on this document at
public-comments-wcag20@w3.org."  The document also has some references to
Bugzilla [2].  Is e-mail the preferred method of submitting comments?  Are
non-members of the working group allowed to add their suggestions directly
to Bugzilla?

In section 1.1 Form URIs, the (non-deprecated) example states: "The
checkFormFields() function would return true if there are form errors,
stopping the submission of the form".  Should the returned value be false
instead?

Yet another deprecated example would be using
<input type="submit" onclick="submitmyform()" />
when the author really wants to achieve
<form onsubmit="submitmyform()" ...>
However, there may be real requirements to fire different scripts when
e.g. different submit buttons are used (thus making onclick preferable). 
Perhaps you would like to add an example or two to illustrate this.

In 1.2 Images as submit buttons it might be useful to note that when the
example is used:
<input type="image" name="submit" src="submit.gif" alt="Submit this form">
the submitted request will include submit.x=x-value and submit.y=y-value
instead of submit=Submit%20this%20form that the author might expect (see
[3]).

In 2.1 the example given is:
<a href="register.php" target="registerwindow"
 onclick="window.open('',this.target);">register here</a>

First of all, I don't really see the point of onclick handler here.  If
there were some options for window.open, it would justify the use of
script.  What is the effect achieved with onclick handler in the example?
If there is a point of specifying attributes for the new window (height,
width, position, menu elements, scrollbars etc.), perhaps they would
require some hints of their own?

To take it a bit further, how about:
<a href="wcag-kommentit.txt" target="registerwindow" onclick="return
window.open(this.href,this.target,'scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes').focus()
? false: true);">register here</a>

Calling the focus() method of the new window is important since otherwise
an old window might be left unnoticed by the user.  Does this violate
Guideline 2.1 L1 SC1?  I submitted a more thorough example via the
techniques submission form [4].

You might want to consider altering your code examples so that they would
be readable on narrow displays or in printed form.  (Suggestion, try to
wrap lines so that they would be shorter than 60 characters.)

Best Regards,

    Samuel

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-SCRIPT-TECHS-20041119/>
[2] e.g. <http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/show_bug.cgi?id=772>
[3] <http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#input-control-types>
[4] <http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/TECHS-SUBMIT/>

Received on Monday, 22 November 2004 16:10:43 UTC