Re: handling fallback content for still images

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:10:31 +0200, Robert Burns <rob@robburns.com> wrote:
> Yes, I understand that's why I added the con. Should I add it a second  
> time? I've said this again and again this will take a long-term solution  
> approach. In that time-frame authors may not even know what a text/html  
> compatible serialization is? They won't be confused because there might  
> come a time when no one uses that serialization anymore.

In that case it would make more sense to develop something like XHTML 2.0  
which is not what this Working Group is doing last time I checked.


>>> Because <Img> has to be empty, authors cannot provide semantically  
>>> rich or media rich fallback content for images in a simple and  
>>> straight-forward manner (as they can for <object>, <video>, <audio>,  
>>> <iframe>, <object>, and <canvas>). <img alt> cannot do that at all.  
>>> It's really only listed there as a token solution.
>>
>> Is there any evidence that suggests that authors will start providing  
>> more meaningfull fallback when they can have more than just text? For  
>> instance, what do authors currently do for <object> when they use it  
>> for Flash or video or some such?
>
> I'm not a palm reader. I don't know the future. Is there any evidence  
> that the world wide web will exist next year? I know I couldn't prove it  
> will. However, it should be a goal of ours to provide a language that  
> services the needs of authors. Why are you so resistant to providing  
> these facilities?

Because

  1) Changing fundamental parts of HTML in drastic ways is not something
     I think we should be doing.

  2) While I agree that it would have been nice if <img alt> was designed
     better when invented I'm not convinced it's so bad now. All user
     agents now support it so graceful fallback is no longer relevant and
     you typically don't need markup fallback.

  3) As mentioned above, I'm not convinced images need markup fallback.
     The people who really do need markup fallback (I'd love to see some
     realistic examples) can use <object> once that's better supported.


> No. I wasn't trying to make it true. That its true I think is obvious.
> I was simply trying to reiterate so you wouldn't forget about it.

Ok, I hope I explained well enough why I think this is not obvious at all.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

Received on Thursday, 5 July 2007 10:32:58 UTC