Re: Semantic markup of documents:

> > If a page is so complicated that it needs meta 
> > information about the purpose of links, there is 
> > something fundamentally wrong with the page.
> 
> how about the example of attributes added to table to allow for better 
> navigation: this is within a page.

I was more thinking of rel in anchors. 
Whenever a table is not displayed in a two dimensional
fashion the association of headers and cells is no longer
self evident. I would consider it "structural markup" rather 
than "metadata", but I am not sure that the distinction is 
important.

When I said structural markup, I meant headings paragraphs
and lists, rather then FONT, CENTER, and HR. Navigation 
via elements is I think quite useful. One can do a very 
good document outline from headings and anchors (even if they
have no rel). But it's quite difficult to do it with FONT 
and CENTER.

> 
> > I think that the main usability problems are in navigating 
> > within a website, that is, between pages.
> 
> where does frame navigation or form navigation fit ?

Frame navigation is evidently between pages. They are 
just dumpped simultaneously at the poor user's 
subwindows interface to acheive higher confusion 
and reduce usability. For maximum usability its up to 
the user decide how many open windows he wants and 
how to arange them.

I find Lynx' support for frames more usable than Netscape's
for sighted users. Here we all agree that the title attribute
in FRAME can make life of users of Lynx-like interface easier.

I recommend to all browser developers to learn from Lynx.
The user gets maximum information, both the links to 
the frames, and the noframes section. 

If a browser like Opera would provide links to the 
frames, when frames are turned off, it would be great. 
The user will be able to open the frames in separate 
windows and decide himself how to tile them or put 
above each other or to open two out of seven frames 
or whether they have scroll bars or not, and in which 
frame images are turned on.

Regards,
Nir Dagan.
http://www.econ.upf.es/%7Edagan/
dagan@upf.es

Received on Thursday, 30 July 1998 17:26:06 UTC