Re: New window inform user, before or after link?

> <a href="[16]http://www.somedest.com" title="opens a new browser window">link
>  text"</a>
>
> The problem with this is that title already has a pretty well defined
> meaning for this element;

The full definition is as follows:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#adef-title>
<quoth>
          This attribute offers advisory information about the element
          for which it is set.

   Unlike the [96]TITLE element, which provides information about an
   entire document and may only appear once, the [97]title attribute may
   annotate any number of elements.
</quoth>

The title attribute is *unlike* the <title> element.

You the author may make your title attribute equal to the <title> element
of some other document, for whatever strange reason you may have, but it
is in no way required. It doesn't even make sense.

I know that in the last two weeks, WCAG has suddenly decided that the
title attribute exists and must contain part of the <title> element, but
this is nonsense. There isn't a single standards-compliant Web developer
who uses title attributes who uses them only that way. It's a terrible
idea.

> it should be the same as the title element
> content on target resource.  For an external link like this, it should
> either match the title element, or be what the title element would have
> been if the author had been competent, or the media type had supported
> one.

Oh, I *see*.

> Your usage is based on the misinterpretation that title = tool tip.

A title functionally *is* a tooltip for most users, including a large
number of people with disabilities.

--

  Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
  Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
  <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>

Received on Thursday, 4 March 2004 18:09:35 UTC