The <label> issue

One of the problems we have with label is that CSS doesn't support us the  
way we could hope it should.

XSLT allows you to move content around to other parts of the document, but  
unfortunately CSS doesn't. When we started with XForms, we had hoped that  
CSS would mature to a more general styling language, but it hasn't (yet).

The clearest case of wanting to move labels, is to the top of a <repeat>,  
though there are some other lesser-occurring use-cases too.

It is obvious that a work-round that is currently used is to have empty  
labels, and use headings instead, which has clear semantic (and  
accesibility) issues.

Another option (that HTML used) would be to allow labels anywhere, and  
then indicate which control they are for with @for.

A problem with this is the loss of context that the label is nested in. I  
have labels like this:

  <label ref="@name"/>

just to give a simple example. Such labels would not be movable without a  
lot of extra work (especially when the label is in a repeat).

That is why I have a preference for a construct that would move the label  
content to another place, in the way that I would prefer CSS to do.  
Strawman:

 <labeltext from="@label"/>
 ...
 <input...>
  <label id="mylabel" ref="@foo"/>

Steven

Received on Wednesday, 23 February 2011 16:08:02 UTC