Re: [whatwg] several messages about the HTML syntax

New Idea!
Remember the long debate about whether longdesc on images was useful  
or not?
I and a few other people had a similar idea.

Longdesc: A URL to a document that contains a long description of the  
image

I think longdesc should be expanded to all attributes. It will be used  
as a native (no javascript needed) way of making more useful tooltips.
It's value can either be a full url or the id of an element on the  
current page or the id of an element on another page(but this would  
require loading a whole other file in the background just to get a  
small portion of it).


<html>
<head>...</head>
<body>
...
<a href="delete.php?id=443" title="Delete this record and all  
associated media" longdesc="#tooltip_delete">Delete</a>

(alternative examples)
    <a href="delete.php?id=443" title="Delete this record and all  
associated media"  
longdesc="tooltipsForEntireApp.html#tooltip_delete">Delete</a>
    -- would load a file with 500 tooltips just to display one of them  
(file should be cached after first use though so I guess it's not too  
bad)

    <a href="delete.php?id=443" title="Delete this record and all  
associated media" longdesc="tooltipsForEntireApp.php? 
tooltip=delete">Delete</a>
   -- dynamically only returns the 1 tooltip you asked for (could be  
done with "ajax" but why?)

...
<!-- all extra helpful tooltips used in this app -->

<div class="hiddentips">
    <div  id="tooltip_add"> .... </div>

    <div id="tooltip_delete">
 <p>
         Clicking this will ask you to delete just this one record.
         All photos, documents, video, and audio files that were
         associated with it using the Multimedia Module will also be  
deleted.
        </p>
        <p>
          To delete more than one record at a time click the checkbox
           in the far left column of each row you want to delete
           and then click the delete button at the bottom of the page.
        </p>
    </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Example of javascript tooltips:
http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001717.php
http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/BubbleTooltips.html

I think this is such a simple yet useful feature that it should be  
native to all browsers.

...I would have attached a screenshot of zbrush's tooltips but I just  
had to reinstall windows :(


On Apr 27, 2008, at 1:12 PM, Křištof Želechovski wrote:

> You disagree with the facts here.
> That is quite understandable;
> I disagree with them as well,
> meaning I think this behavior is unacceptable.
> Sadly, that does not make the facts go away.
>
> Do not abandon hope though;
> a rumor says it is going to be fixed in Firefox 3.
>
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Maurice [mailto:maurice@thymeonline.com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 8:39 PM
> To: public-html@w3.org; Krzysztof Żelechowski
> Subject: Re: [whatwg] several messages about the HTML syntax
>
>
> I disagree. The most user friendly thing about Pixologic's Z-brush is
> that if you hold control before a tool-tip appears you get a MASSIVE
> and EXTREMELY HELPFUL tooltip (sometimes with images). It makes
> learning the software easier and faster. Saves you having to dig
> through the help file for instructions about the tool/menu item.
>
>
> On Mar 4, 2008, at 11:51 AM, Krzysztof Żelechowski wrote:
>
>>
>> Dnia 03-03-2008, Pn o godzinie 20:18 +0000, David Gerard pisze:
>>> On 03/03/2008, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Krzysztof Żelechowski wrote:
>>>
>>>>> When I want to define a paragraph-style tool-tip, I am left with
>>>>> the
>>>>> following choice: either make the source code unreadable by
>>>>> making an
>>>>> excessively long line (this is also true for URI attributes but
>>>>> they are
>>>>> not expected to be readable) or make the tool-tip ugly by
>>>>> inserting line
>>>>> breaks.  (It cannot be done in an portable way because the width
>>>>> of the
>>>>> tool-tip window and the fount metrics at the viewer's UI are
>>>>> unknown).
>>>
>>>> I recommend not making paragraph-long tooltips. That's terrible  
>>>> user
>>>> interface.
>>>
>>>
>>> But how will we read the asides on xkcd.com ?!
>>
>> Admittedly, we cannot, at least not in Firefox.
>>
>> Hm.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Received on Monday, 28 April 2008 02:11:08 UTC