Re: Complex Table Examples

On Wed, 30 May 2007 12:38:28 +0200, Ben Boyle <benjamins.boyle@gmail.com>  
wrote:
> Can we do that *and* continue to have @headers for those that need it?
>
> As I understand it, the proposal is that <th> in the first row and
> column are explicitly scoped to the row/column if @scope is omitted.
> This seems like a good fallback for UAs to implement. May encourage
> laziness in web developers, but if it improves accessibility it is
> still worth it. (Be better, perhaps, if authoring tools applied @scope
> by default).

Laziness is good. The more accessibility we can have by having those kind  
of "implicit algorithms" the more pages will become accessible as it  
doesn't cost authors anything to make those pages accessible. Requiring  
authors to perform additional steps only works in a few cases (when it's  
required by law or something) and even then they might get it wrong due to  
incorrect tutorials or too complex technology...


> I don't understand the arguments for removing @headers though. Isn't
> it already implemented in most browsers? There seem enough cases here
> to warrant it's continued part in HTML.

The arguments for removing it are that the feature isn't widely used, that  
existing tutorials already get it wrong (spelling it header instead of  
headers) and that it makes the language more complex if we add it. We have  
to define exactly how it interacts with scope= what headers="" means, etc.  
I'm not sure I see the advantages in an increased learning cost for  
authors and a more complex language when a simpler version of the  
languages handles the same use cases.


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

Received on Wednesday, 30 May 2007 10:50:51 UTC