Re: new tag suggestion - navlist

On 11 December 2013 20:25, Michael A. Peters <mpeters@shastaherps.org> wrote:
> It is common for websites to use nested un-ordered lists for navigation.
>
> They use CSS for this.

As far as presentation is concerned, CSS is the right way to go.

> Typically the top level list is displayed horizontally near the top of the
> page, and mousing over or clicking on the items opens up the sub-menu.
>
> This works very well with a mouse but it does not work so very well from a
> phone touch-screen where it is very easy to touch the wrong item.

I can't talk about other systems, but my experience with Chrome on
Android is that the browser will zoom in when the user taps on a very
crowded area of the page, rather than sending the "click" event
straight away. For the general case, this looks like something each
implementation should address on its own. In fact, the problem itself
is extremely platform-dependant.

Also, from the authoring perspective, if people craft their CSS in a
way that works only on reasonably large screens and then force-feeds
them to other environments (media=all and similar approaches), then
the author is the one to blame. It would be awful if browsers stopped
honoring authors' instructions just because some can't get their media
queries right.

> If instead of using the <ul> node with CSS we could use a <navlist> node
> with CSS, that would make it easier for browsers on phones to understand
> the context of the list and present the contents in a way to the user that
> is easier for the user to select the right item. Kind of like how the
> Dolphin browser does a nice job of presenting the contents of a form
> menulist.

It's my impression that the whole purpose of the proposed <navlist>
element would be to serve as a hint to the UA, is this right? If
that's the case, does it provide anything that <ul role="navigation">
would not?

> Just a thought, a thought after spending a very frustrating 20 minutes
> trying to get the right item on my phone before giving up and waiting
> until I got home when I could use my laptop.
>
> The HTML was valid and worked well with a mouse, it just was not well
> suited for a phone. An element making it clear to the browser what kind of
> information was in the list may have helped the browser accomodate.

Again, this is an authoring issue. If some authors can't get CSS
right, there is no reason to expect they'd use <navlist> (or anything
like that) correctly either.

Have you tried contacting the site owner's to provide this feedback?
Maybe they could actually address the issue if they were aware of it.

Received on Thursday, 12 December 2013 07:21:48 UTC