- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 19:06:49 -0700
- To: tina@greytower.net
- Cc: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
On Friday, June 13, 2003, at 06:32 PM, tina@greytower.net wrote: > On 13 Jun, Kynn Bartlett wrote: >>> have gotten so far with the ideas you mention from HTML 2.0 I am >>> less >>> than optimistic. >> It's easier to upgrade user agents than get everyone to put visible >> "skip >> navigation" or "skip to main content" links on their pages. > > That I find unrealistic. Of course you find it unrealistic. > Despite your choice of the phrase "you seem to > think" later on in your reply, it is a fact that some commonly used > user-agents today do not in any way or form give users access to the > information contained in LINK tags. And your point was? You seem to be saying that <link> isn't useful now, is that right? So...maybe we need a hack, such as "skip links", in order to get around that? Which...is just what I was saying, but for some reason you refuse to acknowledge it. > The specification isn't unclear on what the LINK is for. That it is > unclear on how it should be presented is not really important - Sure it is important. You can't claim that browsers are failing to conform if there's nothing to conform _to_. Even HTML 4.0 doesn't say what should be done with the meta-data. > how it > should be presented depends on how the user-agent presents data > overall, > and an HTML specification would be seriously strange should it > concern > itself with listing all the various ways that might happen. The specification does _not_ say that the browser needs to present the <link> information at all. It says "may." Do you understand the term "may"? (This is not a sarcastic question. This is a real question, related to "must", "should", and "may". If you are going to claim a failure to conform, you need to identify what the browsers are doing that is not in conformance.) > We have, I hope, left the days of 3.2 behind. And hopefully we'll leave the days of 4.01 and move to a better standard. Why does that claim seem to bother you so much? > Today, in 2003, we have browsers in common use - even claimed to be > THE > most commonly used browser - which do not support parts of a HTML > standard > from 1995. You keep saying "1995" as if the <link> specified something that browsers were required to implement and did not. Can you please identify which part of this mythical 1995 document is being violated by commonly used browsers? (Where did "THE most common used browser" come from? This isn't just some misplaced Microsoft hostility, is it?) > It would be fair to say that an XHTML 2.0 standard could be > implemented > some time in 2010 - if at all. On what do you base this? > The debate on whether XHTML 2.0 has a future > belongs elsewhere. Then why did you bring it up? > >> There's a difference between a set of links designed to take you >> through >> the document, and one which is designed to take to, well, where you >> appear to be now, which was only inserted for supposed compatibility >> with >> screenreaders and other linear forms of access. > > Supposed compatibility ? I am, again, lost. I have no difficulty *at > all* > seeing myself using a "Skip the table of contents" or "Skip to the > main > content" link in a graphical browser. So, if all browsers magically allowed you -- overnight, tomorrow, when you wake up -- to skip to navigation whenever you wanted, would you still encode "skip the table of contents" links in your page? No, you wouldn't -- because they're not an intrinsic part of the content; they're something you added on to a specific presentation. > The 'skip to main content' link is just that - a link that allows a > user > to skip a prefix of some sort, to get to the meat of the document. It > it is a good accessibility tool in books and on the web. Nobody is arguing it's _not_ a good accessibility tool. I'm saying the functionality should be directly supported in HTML in an explicit, structural manner -- rather than relying on the <a> tag (or even the <link> tag) for something that _should_ be easily and sensibly derived from the structure of the document. If HTML were designed from scratch, based on what we know now about how the Web works, the text-formatting parts would be the same -- but the structure would be (and SHOULD be) vastly improved. >> We'd be much better off with a robust markup language instead of HTML >> which requires literally telling, in a way that _varies from site to >> site to site_, where the primary content is located and where the > > No, we're actually *much* better off with a simple, generic, language > like HTML. If used right. Isn't that what I've been saying? We need a simple, generic language like HTML which is robust enough to handle the _basic functions of the Web_ without requiring everyone to come up with non-standard solutions for Every. Page. On. The. Web. What do I mean by non-standard solutions? Well, quick, without looking at it, tell me about the name of the skip-link is on http://kynn.com/, and what it's named, and what the URL is. Each Web site will have a different variation, both in the text, the name of the link, the URL, what it goes to, and so on. This lack of standardization -- the fact that everyone has to grow their own -- points out that there's a deeper problem than just simply slapping an <a href="#skip"> band-aid on all pages in existence. For that, we need to get to the root of the problem, and that root is poor structural identification within HTML itself. -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Author, CSS in 24 Hours http://cssin24hours.com Inland Anti-Empire Blog http://blog.kynn.com/iae Shock & Awe Blog http://blog.kynn.com/shock
Received on Saturday, 14 June 2003 12:06:48 UTC