Namespaced ARIA markup no longer supported in Firefox 3 {FWD]

---------- Forwarded Message -----------
From: Aaron Leventhal <aaronleventhal@moonset.net>
To: dev-accessibility@lists.mozilla.org
Sent: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:14:27 -0500
Subject: Namespaced ARIA markup no longer supported in Firefox 3

Now that PFWG decided that aria-[propertyname] attributes were the 
official way forward, Mozilla has decided to remove support for the old 
namespaced ARIA properties.

The decision was made to ensure everyone gets over to the new approach 
while we're still in a pre-ARIA 1.0 phase. This will ensure that 
everything which works in Firefox 3 can also work in Opera, IE, Safari 
etc. once they fully support ARIA (Opera has confirmed they are already 
working on it). Removing the namespaced property support also removes a 
fair amount of code and attribute processing.

It now no longer matters whether you use XHTML or HTML (or for that 
matter, SVG or XUL). Firefox will process the new non-namespaced markup 
the same way on anything it renders. You can use ARIA markup 
declaratively and set it dynamically the same way, regardless of the 
content type.

For those who really need Firefox 2 support, then you will need to do 
what the Dojo toolkit does. You will need a generic method to set an 
ARIA property if you don't already have one. In that method, set a 
namespaced attribute (aria:property) for Firefox 2, and the 
non-namespaced (aria-[property]) attribute for *all* other browsers -- 
Firefox 3, Opera, IE, etc.

For details on how Dojo does the browser switch, you can view their 
wai.js code which provides exact details. (Licensing terms: You may use 
Dojo in commercial software without obtaining a separate license or 
incurring other obligations. See http://dojotoolkit.org/about/license 
for more info). The wai.js code is here: 
http://trac.dojotoolkit.org/browser/dijit/trunk/_base/wai.js

This change takes affect in Firefox 3 nightly builds with the date 12/12 
and later.

- Aaron
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Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2007 04:44:17 UTC