Skip Sections

It seems to me that a list of links is not the only thing that risks
interrupting the narrative of a page for linear renditions such as speech.

I sometimes write a page designed to render in multiple columns for
majority visible browsers.  Schematically, things like

<h2>Main Story</h2>
<p>here is a first paragraph at the top</p>

<div class="right-inset-30%">
<h3>Some subsidiary story</h3>
<p>bla bla bla</p>
</div>

<p>This continues the main story, flowing around the inset.</p>


This works well in graphical browsers, but breaks the story for
linear browsers.  The alternative of keeping the main story together
loses the ability to float-and-flow for the majority readers.
Also "headers navigation" does nothing for it, because there's
logically no header to mark the continuation.


I think perhaps we need to view this kind of situation as a
generalisation of "skip links", and provide a similar kind of
workaround.  I have used the following, and wonder if it is
satisfactory in all realistic cases:

(1) Use the above schematic for the benefit of visual browsers:
(2) Add a "Continue this story" link and a "Main story continued"
    target before and after the insets respectively.
(3) Style the "continue" anchors as "display: none"

The URL in my .sig is a case in point.

-- 
Nick Kew

Nick's manifesto: http://www.htmlhelp.com/~nick/

Received on Monday, 29 March 2004 10:25:33 UTC