Changes to the Page Author Guidelines - January

Hello all,

Following are five significant changes to the Page Author Guidelines since
December.  For a complete listing of changes that have been made since the
November meeting, please view the log of changes at
http://www.w3.org/GL/htmlgide.htm 

At the moment, Ian Jacob, a professional editor, is reviewing the Page
Author Guidelines.  Further changes may be made based on his review.  Check
back to the page on a regular basis for the latest versions.

Chuck, Gregg, and Wendy

***********
Five significant changes to the page author guidelines since December.
1. A few of the early sections of the HTML 4.0 recommendation were
reorganized into one fewer section (reduced from 25 total to 24).  We
updated the master document to reflect the changes by renumbering effected
sections and updating the names of the place-holders.

2. Added to the section on Frames:
[Recommended] Provide descriptions of the layout and purpose of frames and
how multiple frames relate to each other. 
[New] Use the "longdesc" attribute on <FRAME> and <IFRAME> elements to link
to a 
page with descriptions.

3. Added to the section on Forms:
[Recommended] For long lists of selections, group items into a hierarchy.  
[New] In the near future, browsers will display grouped lists with
expanding and collapsing levels of detail.   To group items, use
<OPTGROUP>   elements with a <SELECT> element, such as:

<FORM action="http://somesite.com/prog/someprog" method="post">
<P><SELECT name="ComOS">
<OPTGROUP label="Comm Servers">
<OPTGROUP label="PortMaster 3">
<OPTION label="3.7.1" value="pm3_3.7.1">PortMaster 3 with ComOS 3.7.1
<OPTION label="3.7" value="pm3_3.7">PortMaster 3 with ComOS 3.7
<OPTION label="3.5" value="pm3_3.5">PortMaster 3 with ComOS 3.5
</OPTGROUP>
<OPTGROUP label="PortMaster 2">
<OPTION label="3.7" value="pm2_3.7">PortMaster 2 with ComOS 3.7
<OPTION label="3.5" value="pm2_3.5">PortMaster 2 with ComOS 3.5
</OPTGROUP>
</OPTGROUP>
<OPTGROUP label="Routers">
<OPTGROUP label="IRX">
<OPTION label="3.7R" value="IRX_3.7R">IRX with ComOS 3.7R
<OPTION label="3.5R" value="IRX_3.5R">IRX with ComOS 3.5R
</OPTGROUP>
</OPTGROUP>
</SELECT>
</FORM>

**Note - the next two items were added to the "Tips and tricks for more
accessible design" section of the author guidelines and checklist, but we
are not sure where they fit in the master document.  It might be best to
move them into "Good web site design practices."

4. Added to the Tips and Tricks section (no ratings for this section)
* Create a single downloadable file for documents that exist as a series of
separate pages.  This facilitates people reading documents off-line.
Currently,  an archival or compression program is needed to create the
single file.  In the near future, user agents will be able to collate
separate pages based on information  in page headers.  The following
example shows how to indicate where the first page of the reference manual 
exists as well as  which page follows the current one.

<head>
<title>Reference manual -- Chapter 1</title>
<link rel="Start" title="The first page of the manual"   type="text/html"
href="http://someplace.com/manual/start.html">
<link rel="Next" title="Chapter 2" type="text/html"
href="http://someplace.com/manual/ch2.html">
</head>

5. Added to the Tips and Tricks section (no ratings for this section)
* Place distinguishing information at the beginning of headings,
paragraphs, lists, etc. to decrease the amount of sifting readers perform
to find important information.  This is commonly referred to as
"front-loading" and is especially helpful for people accessing information
serially.


-----------
Markup Guidelines Working Group
cpl@starlingweb.com
(613) 820-2272

Received on Thursday, 22 January 1998 12:43:48 UTC