- From: Matthew Raymond <mattraymond@earthlink.net>
- Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:10:33 -0400
Jim Ley wrote:
>> Web pages are a special GUI case where behavior needs to be as
>>consistent as possible across all platforms.
>
> Why?
Because otherwise part of the web page UI may behave in
unpredictable ways, causing an author's custom UI work to fail on
specific platforms.
> One of the main reasons I choose my platform is how the GUI
> acts, and if I cannot configure it to work as I am used to, I will not
> use that platform, I cannot use the mac system
You're going to stop using Macs because you can click the label in
order to gain control focus?
> (I'm not trained on it - mind you without a nipple, there's no way I
> can buy a mac anyway)
???
>>Web authors need to know
>>that the way their page behaves on their own platform is going to be the
>>the same on all other platforms.
>
> Why? They can't expect the phone and the PC to be the same, why
> bother about different platforms?
Why can't the expect the phone and the PC to behave the same when
rendering the same markup and styling? If it's a feature issue, then the
web author needs to consider whether he's going to support that
particular phone.
>>>As described above, that makes no sense for most OS X users.
>
> This is a very good reason why such behaviour should not be in a
> specification, but should be purely left up to implementation, so they
> can follow their own OS conventions.
By this reasoning, specifications should use the lowest common
denominator of OS behavior only, or not specify behavior at all. While
I'm all for language that give the user agent vendor flexibility in
implementation, description of UI behavior cannot always be avoided. A
good example would be the checkbox. You want clicking the label to be
treated as a click on the checkbox because the checkbox is such a small
target to hit with your mouse that it becomes a usability issue.
Received on Monday, 19 July 2004 14:10:33 UTC