Re: ISSUE-30 longdesc Re: Clarification of rational for deprecation...

On Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:09:23 +0530, James Graham <jg307@cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>> Longdesc is not a perfect solution. But in terms of design it seems a  
>> lot better thought out than alt - it may be badly used at least as  
>> often, but were well used it is able to improve more in more cases...
>
> I'm prepared to bet that, given a choice, the majority of blind users  
> would take a browser that supported only alt over one that only  
> supported longdesc.

Oh, absolutely.

> This seems to be a classic example of "worse is better"; whilst the  
> design of alt is considerably less powerful than longdesc, that  
> simplicity has made it easier to get people to understand how to use it  
> correctly, and to actually deploy it on their sites.

Well, alt is also a more important functionality, one that is much less  
work to get half right. I agree that simplicity of design is helpful. It  
is also true that alt has suffered from monstrous amounts of misuse and  
poor use - even from people who are trying hard to get it right - and it  
is in that sense that I think longdesc was better designed. Of course,  
that's substantially just opinion... aesthetics of design are only  
moderately convertible and measurable in any sufficiently broad audience.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals   Try Opera 9.5: http://snapshot.opera.com

Received on Wednesday, 6 February 2008 14:55:21 UTC