- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:44:57 +0000 (UTC)
On Thu, 1 Dec 2005, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>>>>
>>>> <menu>
>>>> <cmd> <!-- Menu command item -->
>>>> <button/> <!-- [Label] for command menu -->
>>>> <select/> <!-- The menu items -->
>>>> </cmd>
>>>> <li> <!-- Menu list item (e.g. navigational list) -->
>>>> <menulabel/> <!-- Label for nav menu -->
>>>> <menu/> <!-- The menu items -->
>>>> </li>
>>>> </menu>
>>>
>>> You're mistaken. The <button> caption actually isn't the menu label in
>>> many cases.
>>
>> Since the button itself wouldn't actually be visible in WA1 UAs, it's
>> really only there for fallback, why can't it be used as the menu's
>> label?
>
> Because, semantically, it's not actually a label for the <select>. In
> fact, semantically, the two controls are only related indirectly via the
> <form>.
Well, they have semantic if we say they do. We could easily say in the
spec that if a button and a select both are in an <li> of a <menu> with an
attribute foopy with value barpy, that they are in fact related in that
the <select> represents commands and the button represents the activation
of the command and has a label that says can be used as a label for a menu
button of the same set of commands.
> You could use the <button> as a menu label if the <label> is absent, but
> the web author should not be required to use the <button> as a label,
> because that forces them to use inferior fallback. The button as a label
> in a fallback scenario just doesn't seem that common to me.
Yeah I agree that it should be possible to provide a <label> instead of a
<button>.
> It can be argued, however, that the overloading of <menu> is
> undesirable, I agree.
It could be argued. I still think it's an opportunity we shouldn't pass
up, though. We want an element to render menus, and we have "<menu>" with
convenient fallback characteristic that happens to already be deprecated.
> Thought:
>
> | <menu>
> | <li command="cmd_in_head1">Menu Item 1</li>
> | ...
> | </menu>
>
> Hmm.
That could work. It's an advanced feature though. (Anything involving
indirection is going to be harder for users; the more indirection, the
harder it is, IMHO. This is one reason <font> is easier than CSS.) I'd
expect use of the command="" attribute to be much rarer than just use of
<command> itself:
<menu>
<command .../>
<command .../>
<command .../>
</menu>
(Falls back to a line break.)
> In that case, could we just require <li> like we do for <ul> and
> <ol>? Perhaps even replace <menu> with <nl>, making it more like the
> XHTML 2.0 element?
<nl> doesn't have convenient fallback characteristics.
--
Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Tuesday, 6 December 2005 16:44:57 UTC