- From: Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:35:30 +0300
- To: Gregory J.Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net>
- Cc: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@comcast.net>, "Lachlan Hunt" <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, <public-html@w3.org>, <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
On Jul 29, 2007, at 23:51, Gregory J. Rosmaita wrote: > the main point is, there should be no restriction on the means of > exposing ALT and/or TITLE, other than the implementor's creativity > and imagination, provided that user agents are capable of providing > multiple options for their exposition as well as for ignoring them > altogether... I think your position makes sense for features that an user can opt to turn on but that are off as factory defaults. However, I think the factory defaults that a browsers ships with need to be much more prudent and should even cater to control freak *authors* instead of directly catering to *users*. The browser factory defaults are what influence the most how authors perceive a feature. If the value of the alt attribute is shown as a tooltip almost always (in the spectrum of UAs that the author has cared to examine), the author will treat the attribute as meaning "tooltip augmenting the image"--not as meaning "textual alternative"-- and will write alt text that is inappropriate for use as an alternative. Or if the author thinks the tooltip interferes with his graphic design, he might even try to defeat the tooltip altogether and deprive all users of any alt text. A couple of other examples: Focus rings are very important for users who use a visual rendering with keyboard navigation. Yet, I think the users who need them would be better off if browsers had focus rings disabled by default and inconvenienced the users by requiring them to flip a switch to turn them on as part of the post-install configuration of the browser. When focus rings are on by default, graphic designers who think the focus ring is interfering with their art try to fight the focus ring. The author might try to use CSS to make the focus ring invisible or the author might use JavaScript to move the focus in a surprising way. Either way, users who need the focus ring are worse off it the author fights the focus ring. This was a particular problem with Mac IE 5. It used a focus ring that was consistent with the platform focus convention and the convention was more pronounced than the Windows convention which meant that graphic designers were even more distressed with the focus ring interfering with their art. Safari, smartly, makes full focus traversal a feature the user has to turn on in the preferences. This way user who need it get it, but graphic designers don't feel a need to fight the more pronounced Mac focus ring. Back in the days of Mosaic, images that were also links were rendered with a link-colored border. In theory, this is good for the user, because it helps the user figure out which images are links. The problem is that virtually all authors as well as many users think that the border is horribly ugly. Therefore, as soon as HTML got a feature for suppressing the border, authors made getting rid of the border part of their routine. The default border is an annoyance for authors. Everyone feels the need to take care of getting rid of it. On the other hand, a user who'd prefer explicit link indication over aesthetics is worse off that he'd be in a hypothetical situation where borders could simply be enabled as a preference or with simple user CSS (that wouldn't need to counter all the ways authors use to suppress the border). -- Henri Sivonen hsivonen@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
Received on Monday, 30 July 2007 08:35:46 UTC