Re: BLINK repair mechanisms (calling all CSS gurus!)

At 02:33 PM 10/21/99 -0400, Chris Ridpath wrote:
>Gregory makes a good point for including the Hx as replacements for
>BLINK/MARQUEE. Another reason for suggesting Hx is that it might get the
>user thinking about using these in the future instead of BLINK/MARQUEE.
>
>Should we also allow the author to change the BLINK/MARQUEE to something
>else?
>
>To repair a BLINK/MARQUEE we could offer the author 3 choices:
>1) remove it
>2) change it to: [EM, STRONG, SPAN, (perhaps Hx)]
>3) change it to: [enter your own tag]

1) appears just before 3) in the descending likelihood that the author will
want this order for these options.

2) needs to be subdivided and reordered.

3) there are heuristics that could be applied to estimate what role the
text that is MARQUEEing or BLINKing plays in the page, such as placement in
the page and severity of text emphasis vs. the other emphasis employed on
the page.  I don't expect A-Prompt to get there right away but in fact if
we developed a "learned" weighting scheme for the effective severity of
combinations of text effects based on demographics in actual pages, I bet
we could get very good at detecting anonymous H1 text items, for example.

One problem is that there is a common need for a lesser emphasis headline
followed by a greater emphasis headline as one starts the head of a module.
 Actually, in the situations I am thinking of one could conceptualize the
first, less emphasized identification as a running header and class that
outside the Hn series and be then OK to have subheads all follow their
superheads and be at a lower level (higher n in Hn) than their superheads.
(we need a way to indicate running heads that refer to superscopes of the
current module).
Al

>
>For example, here's how the A-Prompt dialog might look:
>http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/tags/blink1.html
>
>Chris
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
>To: Leonard R. Kasday <kasday@acm.org>
>Cc: Evaluation & Repair Interest Group <w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org>
>Sent: Thursday, October 21, 1999 2:10 PM
>Subject: Re: BLINK repair mechanisms (calling all CSS gurus!)
>
>
>> aloha, again, len!
>>
>> you wrote,
>> quote
>>   Do we really want to suggest Hx? In my experience people don't use BLINK
>>   where headers are appropriate and WCAG 3.5 states "Do not use headers
>for
>>   font effects". So we might lead authors down garden path
>> unquote
>>
>> again, i repeat my assertion, based upon over 4 years of deconstructing
>and
>> reconstructing poorly encoded and/or designed sites, that i have most
>often
>> found the BLINK and MARQUEE elements -- often in conjunction with the
>> deprecated FONT element -- used where a header would have been more
>> appropriate...
>>
>> admittedly, this is more consistently true of MARQUEE -- just think of the
>> implications of the element's name -- when i think of a marquee, i think
>of --
>> hell, who cares what i think, here's how WWWebster's Dictionary [1]
>defines
>> "marquee":
>>
>> quote
>> a permanent canopy often of metal and glass projecting over an entrance
>(as of

>> a hotel or theater)
>> unquote
>>
>> based on that definition, i'd argue that the information placed on a
>physical
>> marquee is the equivalent of level 1 and (at least) level 2 headers --
>i.e. the
>> name of the theater, and the name of the show or picture currently being
>shown
>> there...
>>
>> admittedly, BLINK is also quite commonly used to set off a phrase or a
>word, as
>> in:
>>
>> <BLINK>NEW!</BLINK>
>>
>> but i have repeatedly encountered instances where BLINK (again, often in
>> conjunction with FONT) was used to emphasize what should have been encoded
>as a
>> header, or where it (like MARQUEE) was used to add emphasis to what was
>already
>> encoded as a header...
>>
>> gregory.
>>
>> References
>> [1] http://www.m-w.com/
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> He that lives on Hope, dies farting
>>      -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
>>    WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
>>         <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>

Received on Friday, 22 October 1999 01:08:16 UTC